


All that's left is Me

by ByJoveWhatASpend



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Attempted Sexual Assault, F/M, Fear of Death, Grey Wardens, Masturbation, Minor Character Death, Multi, Secret Identity, The Calling, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 21:10:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15871812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ByJoveWhatASpend/pseuds/ByJoveWhatASpend
Summary: The Blight has ended and the world is being put back to rights, but Warden Dove Tabris, Commander of the Grey, just wants a short break from the responsibility. One tiny little trip, away from her desk and the stifling shems of the Keep at Dragon's Peak.In other words, the Origins of Skinner.





	1. Chapter 1

 

The Blight has ended and the world is being put back to rights.

 

Queen Anora, long may she reign, oversees the rebuilding of her nation. The people are overjoyed, they have been saved, and by who?

 

Warden Dove Tabris, Commander of the Grey, and newly anointed Hero of Ferelden.

 

There was a party and everything. Everyone seemed  _ very  _ pleased.

 

She sits now at a wide and heavy desk in a well appointed room, in a well positioned fortress with a hundred men and women in very pointy armour, waiting for  _ her  _ to tell them what to do. What does a Grey Warden do when there isn’t a war to fight? She supposed that Alistair might know the answer. Did they prepare for the next one? Conscript new underlings to their great and just cause?

 

If the pattern from the last few months at this desk held, Tabris suspects that being the Commander of the Grey involved a great deal of paperwork.

 

Her fingers run over the polished wood of her desk. Nothing in her alienage had prepared her for this. The table, that is. The rickety table she and her father had shared was warped with age and hard use. There had been a crack along one side that would bend when Tabris fiddled with it and she had spent most of her childhood resisting the impulse to snap it off, just to feel it break. They couldn't afford to replace it, but that didn’t stop her from pressing her elbow to the edge and hoping for an accident. 

 

Was this desk an antique, left behind by whatever Warden had used it before her or had they bought it with her in mind? Did it need to be polished constantly, like her weapons? It was Sten that had told her (weeks and miles away from the only home she had ever known before that point) how to take care of her blade, but no one had yet said a word about the care and polishing of a writing desk. It feels like she is, again, just waiting and hoping for something to break.

 

Her fingers find a spot of dried ink on the surface of the desk and slowly work it away, scratching gently with her nail and pushing it with her thumb until it disappears. The wood is clean again but her fingers have turned black. Alistair was the one that taught her cleanliness, really, though Sten had made the lesson stick by insisting that  _ filth  _ made you sickly. Tabris hadn’t been sick since leaving her father’s beaten down shack, so she begrudgingly admitted that there was possibly something to the idea. 

 

She licked the ink from her fingers, wiping her spit off on the dark fabric of her trousers. Good as new. Alistair would be proud of her when he came back from the Free Marches.

 

The second moon was out, glowing blue upon her newly-cleaned table. Evening, finally. She was allowed to leave.

 

The guard posted at the end of the hallway nods to her, his head dipping low like he is afraid to be taller than his superior. She nods back and cuts her own eyes away quickly, waiting until she's out of sight before letting herself pull a face. He was easily ten years older than her.  _ Everyone  _ was older than her, here at Dragon’s Peak. She had yet to meet a single person who had spent less than five years with the Wardens, and  _ still  _ they looked to her for leadership, somehow. Where exactly was she supposed to lead them? They had called  _ her  _ to this fortress, in fact, and she hadn’t left it since.

 

There were more troops milling about as she walked through the hallways, most standing at attention as she passed, most smiling, most  _ shems _ . The lazy, sweaty beasts didn't seem to have the same need for action that she did. Soldiers leaned happily in windows and over ramparts, cleaned with absent minded contentedness and found more than enough time to fuck themselves fat in the stables. These Wardens hadn’t been in Fereldan during the Blight, and Loghain's decree hadn’t allowed them to enter the country and fight, even if they had wanted to. What a frightful year they must have had, wondering if Fereldan would fall and the Darkspawn army would flood the borders of foreign nations. How happy must they be to have it ended without them.

 

Even in her own mind she can see why they might expect her to know how to lead the Grey Wardens. In retrospect it probably feels to them like she had fought a war alone, and won. They don’t know yet that she doesn’t belong in charge of them. They haven’t realized that she is almost certain to fuck everything up.

 

She finds herself at the gates rather than her room, and the guard there is quick to salute her. She waves it off, looking down the path that led her here, the path that Alistair left on. It’s  been weeks already and without a single friend here the time apart was taking its toll. It would be reasonable to just  _ make _ a friend, talk to someone, eat her meals in the dining hall. Latch onto the youngest recruit she could find and-- Maker, what did people  _ do  _ in this situation? In Denerim she was born with what had seemed like every friend she would ever need, she’d never been forced to  _ make  _ one. 

 

Could the Commander of the Grey get sick from liquor and climb the  _ vhenadahl _ , throw rocks through the gates to the shemlen guards beyond, and prank the Elder?

 

Probably not. The Commander should probably  _ be  _ the Elder.

 

She didn’t want to make friends with these Wardens. She didn’t want to  _ lead  _ them. She just wanted to be on the road again.

 

“Commander Tabris?” the shem at the gate--  _ Von? Ven? Ben?- _ \- was fidgeting in place, seemingly unable to decide between straightening his shoulders to look presentable for his hero or stooping to seem smaller than her instead. So many of these shems took a stance like that around her and it was clawing at her nerves. As though they thought her ego was too big to fit in her tiny little elf body. “Is something wrong, Ser?” 

 

“You tell me,” she snaps out between gritted teeth and, yes, maybe her ego  _ was  _ a little unwieldy, but her size wasn’t the problem. “Have you seen anything noteworthy on your post?”

 

“No ma’am!” he hedges and hums and tells her of the wagons he has seen go by, and the movement of troops that she knows vaguely she herself had ordered. He mentions the beggars that came to take from the scrapheap around back which he told his supervisor about and the lack of response to the affront. Tabris isn’t sure of who supervises the gate and why they would be in charge of beggar relations but so far as Tabris can tell it sounds like he’s doing a fine enough job of things without her poking her nose into it. When Vonny-Ven-Benson has nothing else to say she nods, stepping through the gate, just to know that she can.

 

No invisible barrier keeps her inside and no great wooden door slams in her face. The air outside the fortress is as cool as the air within its gate, but somehow after only two steps it already tastes better.

 

“Ser? Are you going out?”

 

Is she?  _ Can  _ she? Without a purpose, a destination, an escort, can she just walk out of the fortress and go where she pleases?

 

The voice asking the question in her mind sounds a little like her cousin Soris, laughing as though her questions about the outside world were childish. _ ’What exactly do you think is waiting on the other side of the gate? There’s nothing out there but humans that would rather that  _ **_we_ ** _ stay  _ **_here._ ** **’**

 

After she was dragged out of the Alienage by her hair, after she sliced the rich shemlens throat with the dagger Soris had provided, he vowed never to leave the alienage again. He promised the Maker to stay with his mousey wife and make a million mousey babies, to  _ know his place _ , and he hadn’t written to her even once, since.

 

She takes another step outside the gates of  _ her  _ fortress. A second one. Her heavy, polished boots kick up dust just the same as her threadbare leathers ones had, when she took her first look at the world outside her Alienage. She had weapons, then, and Duncan ahead of her, but she didn’t need them for this. Just a walk. A turn around the fortress, just far enough to feel alone, for once, and clear her head. 

 

“I’m meeting someone,” she says before the guard can try to follow. “Keep it out of your mouth if you want to keep your tongue.”

 

If he’s surprised she doesn’t care. Tabris starts down the path at a march.

 

XXXXXXXX

 

There is a bridge not terribly far from the fortress and when Tabris comes to it she skirts the edge, trudging down a steep muddy incline until she is at the water's edge. She follows the river westward, and it isn't long before her body forgets the Keep entirely and a knot that had been twisting inside her gut begins to unwind. There is no one out here but her, no nosy little suckups begging for one-on-one training, no experienced soldiers afraid to critique her fighting form and pulling their blows to help her save face. 

 

There  _ is  _ spindleweed, though, and nugs aplenty. She lets the stupid animals alone but picks a few of the weeds, enjoying their bitter smell as the trees around the river grow taller, twisting overhead in a loose green canopy.

 

Cheerful bats swoop past her, catching lightning bugs in their mouth, and distant owls huff out their greetings. This could only be better if she had her party with her, though she knows, technically, that most of them probably would have complained.

 

‘ _ I will not tromp through mud for anything less than saving the world _ ’ Morrigan would probably say. Though, actually, she was  _ from  _ a swamp so maybe she wouldn’t have minded a muddy creek all that much.

 

‘ _ Aren't you from a swamp _ ?’ Alistair would have been quick to point that out. ‘ _ Shouldn't mud and gunk be a ‘Wicked Witch of the Wild’s natural habitat? _ ’

 

‘ _ A worm like you would certainly be more at home face down in the dirt than in our noble expedition. Do lay down in a ditch a while if you’re feeling testy, we  _ **_certainly_ ** _ won't leave you behind. _ ’

 

Morrigan would've been more clever than that, probably. Maybe something about lice? And if Wynn was still with them she probably would’ve shut them both up and made the entire groupl check for nits at their next campground. 

 

Tabris follows a bend that is more sand than reeds. The water is  slow and peaceful here and there were an awful lot of large smooth looking rocks sticking out of it. It smelled pretty nice as well, not  _ too  _ muddy and nothing like the dirty water around villages and towns. She didn't stop to think of it, stepping a bit back from the water and beginning to unbuckle her breastplate.

 

Her uniform took ages to put on and take off but she still did it every day. The cuirass, pauldrons, greave and poleyn… all completely unnecessary with nothing to fight, but they made her feel more like who she was  _ now _ , rather than who she had  _ been _ . By the time the tasset and tabard were piled together against the trunk of a tree she knew she was nearly half the weight she had been, the weight of the world off of her shoulders. Wool stockings were rolled and folded carefully, set atop the armour, and linen underthings on top of that. The armour was cleanable but the delicate bits always seemed ready to stain stiffen and destroy at the slightest brush of a nail (or in this case, twig).

 

The water was a bit cooler than she expected, the silt of the stream more slippery, but she managed to walk slowly and carefully into it. This was good. She had loved this, on the road. Cold streams and Alistair fretting over every little nibble from fish or frogs and Tabris learning to swim for the first time. Sten pretending he wasn’t afraid of ‘crocodiles’ and having to explain, again and again, that they were like ‘ _ flat dragon young that hid beneath the wate _ r’. Tabris would have loved to see one but Zevran always promised that they only lived to the north where the climate was dryer. Morrigan had turned into one, once, to try to scare them, but Sten hadn’t batted an eye and just told her that they didn't have wings.

 

The water reached her shoulders at the deepest point and she let her feet float up underneath her, stretching her arms out straight and sucking in a breath to keep buoyant. Zevran had kept his hands beneath her thighs to keep her from sinking, even after she figured out the trick of it. When was the last time he’d sent her a letter? Ages, surely. He loved Antiva and couldn’t really resent him returning to it though she suspected he would probably never leave again. She doubted that as the Fereldan Commander of the Grey she would ever be allowed to leave fereldan. The idea wasn't terrible, really, most people never left the village or city they were born into, but to never get to visit him again... 

 

Maybe Sten would see him. There were a few favours left between them that still needed sorting out, so far as she knew.

 

She let her breath out with a  _ ‘woosh’,  _ dropping suddenly underwater and coming back up coughing and ringing out her ears. Her hair, at least, was short too close these days to drip. It was more comfortable under her helm, but when was the last time she’d worn  _ that _ ? Maybe she would let it grow again. There weren't likely to be any darkspawn grabbing for it any time soon. 

 

Setting her rear on a submerged and slippery rock, Tabris let her toes grip the sand and lay back comfortably, bobbing gently like the head of a waterlily. Her breasts hardly floated, small as they were. She thought they might have actually shrunk a bit, though it might have been the wider set of her shoulders casting illusions. Tabris had been twiggy and pointy as any other alienage brat she knew when she left Denerim but somewhere during that time her legs, arms and stomach had thickened up with a healthy layer of fat and muscle. Maybe all her fancy new scars, thick and hard as most of them were, made her heavier, too. She did  _ feel  _ sturdy, more like the rocks that the lilies, in retrospect.

 

Her fingers trailed over her scars, the terrible ones pulled across her face, the smaller ones on her biceps, the thick mess on the side of her waist. Without much thought her fingers trailed down between her legs, pressing inside herself once before retreating to find the little spot Zevran had discovered for her. The words he used for it were embarrassing, to say the least, and overly flowery, but maybe that could be forgiven for the warmth that ‘bloomed’ through her when she slid her fingers around it in the same sweet circles her friend had, in a creek not too dissimilar from this one. 

 

Zevran would probably love to know that she still thought of him when she did this, if just a little. 

 

She stretched out in the water, eyes slitted to stare up at the trees and the distant stars as her fingers moved. She didn't like the sound of her own breathing then, the hitch and catch and tiny whine on the back of her tongue, even muffled and alone, so she tilts her head back to submerge her ears. Her free hand grabbed and groped at herself randomly, trying to mimic what Alistair had once done, to little effect, before eventually giving it up to cover her mouth instead, catch her embarrassment before she could hear it at all. 

 

Finishing was always the hardest part and she stayed hovering at the edge of it for what felt like ages, her muscles locking up and freezing her hands, her head fuzzy without air. She remembered Alistair's rough, thick fingers pushing her past the limit, hardworking and determined to bring her off. Zevran's thin fingers teasing her past her first time as he whispered reassurances against her neck. She remembered a shameful fumble with Soris, only the once and not even worthwhile, and the shame of it taking her back from the edge just long enough to catch her breath.

 

She dropped the rest of the way beneath the water, closing her eyes, her mouth, and pinching shut her nose. Tabris could hold her breath for just about a minute, that was enough time.

 

In the end it wasnt Zevran or Alistair that she was thinking about as her ears began to ring and the her thoughts got more disjointed. Stens hands correcting her grip on her battle axe. The complete bafflement on his face when she knocked the weapon from his hand and buried the axe in the dirt next to his head. ‘ _ Crocodiles don't have wings. _ ’ with a smile in his eyes.

 

She resurfaced with more dignity than she probably deserved, pushing off of the rock and quickly rubbing at herself until she felt clean again. Her knees were a bit weak but the water took most of her weight. It was a good feeling. She was lighter, now, like the stream had swept away some of the tension that had been building up for the last few months. 

 

The moon climbed higher and she too eventually climbed out of the water, checking herself over for bug or bumps. The mirror in her room at the wardens keep was made of silver and held her image too crisply for Tabris’ liking. She liked herself better in the water here, hawkish in the nose and chin and her eyes too deeply shadowed to really be seen. If she tilted her head just right she could catch the shine of scars down one side of her face, the gap it made in her brow without have to see the over-real detail her forever-crooked eyelid and the odd pull in her lip that would always look like a snarl.

 

She bared her teeth at her reflection, a  _ proper  _ snarl, and in the dim detail of the water it looked almost flattering.

 

When she was dry enough she walked back to her tree to dress. 

 

Her thin strip of linen underwear dangles by the strings over a thin branch at eye level, but everything else is gone.

 

She freezes the moment she sees it, still several steps away. She tenses her ears, listening hard and pushing herself onto her toes to see if the thief was still around. No clinking of armour or shaking of underbrush. No breathing or whispered planning. The nightlife covered any sound they were making, if they were close enough to make any at all.

 

Tabris snatched her linens from the branch and ran away, her back to the river, stopping every twenty paces to listen for sounds. At the fifth pause she takes off west, circling around, doing her best to be quiet as she ran but beginning to panic. They were thieves, at least, probably not killers or they'd have attacked her by now. She finds the stream again and runs along the length closest to the water. There are footprints a few minutes jog from where she had been swimming, fresh and filled with water. She stopped there long enough to tie her underthings back on, trying to figure out if they meant anything. It looked like they belonged to… well, regular boots on regular feet. She put her own foot into one of the muddy holes and found it to be several fingers longer and wider. A shem, statistically, though she might have guessed that without any clues. A shem with at  _ least  _ two feet.

  
“ _ Fuck _ .” she spit out, taking off down the creek and hoping they hadn't gotten too far.


	2. Chapter 2

 

After an hour she had to stop and admit that she’d been outsmarted. 

 

She wasn’t lost, she knew the  _ exact  _ way back to the Keep. Tabris could walk back, swear the shem guarding the gate to secrecy, have him send for a runner to bring clothing from her room, swear  _ that  _ person to secrecy… maybe her luck would turn and she’d find that whatever Warden was posted just south of the bridge was also taking a naked swim and she could steal  _ their  _ clothes and  _ they  _ would be the one that had to make a walk of shame back to the keep.

 

Not  _ very  _ likely. Not the sort of thing to take a bet on. 

 

And in all honestly she’d rather kill whoever was on guard than have them see her this way.

 

She didn’t have any weapons either.

 

“ _ Fuck _ .”

 

She curls up against the foot of a tree, butt planted on the raised roots with her knees to her chest, scowling into the middle distance. What exactly were her options here? 

 

There was a village not far away. She remembered vaguely that most of their flour ( _ and mealworms _ ) came from there. She’d passed through on her way in and it was a lively place that, in all honesty,  _ might  _ recognize her. The Warden Commander could swear her troops to silence if need-be but a random pub-wench who’d never met a knife-ear she respected would probably quiet enjoy telling everyone that she’d seen Tabris cut down to size.

 

The main roads were a sure way to get spotted and attacked. There was only one thing a bandit could steal from her in this state so she would have to stick well back and keep her wits about her, either way.

 

There was an even smaller village, a ways further from the main one, which was barely even noted on her office map. She had the vague notion that they preferred fishing to farming but that was it. Not worthy of notice to the wardens, but maybe…

 

Well, even poor fisherfolk had clotheslines, right?

 

It took more effort to skirt the first village than she would have liked. There seemed to be a rowdy party happening in the middle of town, loud enough to keep the remote houses awake. She darted between trees, pressing herself against itchy rough bark. Easier with clothing that protected her skin from scratches. Easier in the daytime, when a root couldn't trip her up and throw her into the bushes. Easier still in  _ boots _ , especially when a quick dart across a thin road to avoid revellers wedges something sharp and hot into the sole of her foot. 

 

She gives up the first village for a bad time and hurries towards the promise of the smaller one, not stopping for rest until the east horizon starts to turn pink. She sits herself down in a small clearing, ignoring the crunch of leaves beneath her as she stretches one foot across the opposite knee. The blood had long since dried and flaked off. A mabari could follow the trail easily but the packed-in dirt had stemmed the bleeding as well as any bandage might have and only when she pulled at the skin did she see any pink healthy meat. She knocked a few loose small stones from the gash and hoped the incessant stinging wasn’t from any buried-in glass. 

 

Dalish people, to her memory, wore leather footwraps rather than boots. Maybe the calluses were protection enough from the earth. There might be something worthwhile to that idea, in case she ever had her boots stolen again.

 

It's been awhile since she missed a night of sleep and she lets herself stay curled in the prickly, itchy leaves for a few minutes longer, forehead on her knees, to catch her breath. 

 

When she gets up again she's slower, taking careful steps and listening hard for people. It takes a while to find the village, following the sound of the water more than anything else. Pressed and blending as well as she can into the treeline she watches humans move boxes and barrels around on rickety docks. The water they live on is properly a river here, fed from the nearby lake. The shoreline is full of weeds and algae and there is the distinctly rotten smell that comes from generations worth of shem habitation. Hairy men with prickly faces shout to their look-alikes and dower faced women sleepily carry children on their backs and buckets of water to.. Wherever they need them to be. Cookfires and washbasins. 

 

A child is screeching somewhere nearby but none of the humans pay it any mind. Colicy, probably. It’ll end soon, until the next baby is born. Humans breed like kittens, from what Tabris has seen and heard. Can't leave two of them alone for a minute without one of them getting fat with a litter. Maybe not a fair observation but two Wardens under her command had already taken leave this season and she suspected there would be more coming soon. 

 

Tabris does a stealthy pass around the village, checking the clotheslines for anything forgotten but beside a dirty babies smock she is out of luck. She finds a home with the sound of a woman and child inside and moves far enough away to not be noticed as she watches. A man comes by, enters the home, and a short while later leaves again. Another woman comes by with another child and their chattering is birdlike and constant as it slips out the window. Tabris has long since slid herself to the bottom of the tree, eyes closed in rest as she listens for the door. The sun passes overhead and a beetle climbs across her toes, a slow march towards food. A tickle at her ear and when she rubs it, an ant is crushed beneath her finger.

 

She decides, eventually, that the second woman will not be leaving today after all. 

 

It didn't matter. Two strange women that never left their small town were no more likely to recognize her than one.

 

Its well into the morning by the time she has convinced herself to stand and cross the treeless road to knock on their door, and the exposure is more embarrassing than she would like it to be. ‘ _ Its nothing they haven't seen before _ ’ she reminds herself, resisting the urge to wrap her arms round her chest to hide. ‘ _ Not like you’ve got anything worth looking at anyways _ .’

 

The door opens and she forces herself to smile at the strong-jawed shem woman and the greasy haired little baby peering over her shoulder. Pretty enough, for humans, and thick enough across the shoulders that the clothing would fit, which was all she really cared about in the end. “I need--”

 

Tabris is a crumpled heap in the dirt, staring at a drop of blood on a blade of grass. There is shouting and her ears are ringing. The woman stands above her with a club and a wild look in her eye. The baby is curious and the woman is screaming.

 

She rolls out of the way as the horribly ugly fat speckle-faced bitch of a shem rears back to kick her. “FUCK YOU.” she shouts, spitting blood from a bitten tongue, more dripping into her weaker eye. “FUCK YOU AND YOUR LICE RIDDEN SHITHOLE!”

 

“GET  _ AWAY _ !” The woman is hollering like  _ she’s  _ the one that's been hit and the sound is finally getting to the baby, who has started to sob. The second woman comes out of the house behind her with a long staff with a wicked hook at the end. “GET AWAY FROM HERE! MY HUSBAND WILL KILL YOU!”   
  
“I’LL FUCKING KILL YOUR WHOLE FUCKING FAMILY YOU NASTY SHEMLEN WHORE!” Tabris roars back with the voice that made darkspawn cower away from her only months ago. The women flinch back and Tabris uses the time afford to step back as well, her legs less steady under her than she’d like. She spits curses as the blood reaches her eye, taking a quick look over her shoulder. The baby has begun to scream, or maybe it’s the second woman.The path behind her is clear and Tabris dashes down it, darting into the first gap between the trees that will take her.

 

When she's far enough away she wipes at her bloodied face and tries to feel out the gash on her head with only her fingers. It's not deep or dangerous from what she can tell, but head wounds always bled like death. Her eyes still wanted to cross but that might well be just from how tired she was. _ Please let it be from lack of sleep _ .  Her feet ache as she stands against, swiping at the blood that's dripped down her neck and collarbone uselessly. No falling asleep just yet, not after a club to the head. Her feet are steadier after she starts to move again, and she circles slowly back around to the fishing village, approaching from the other end.

 

All of the women who had been left in town, from the looks of it, have clustered around her assailants shack, most with their children and some manor of weapon. They are clucking and panicking like sisters and it makes her feel a bit better to know that, even naked and nearly helpless she has managed to scare them a little. Against all odds. She ought to be at her desk right now, miles away, sleepy and miserable, but she’d somehow managed to pick a naked fight with a town full of shems for no reason at all. If nothing else it proved that if she started missing adventure again all she needed to do was wait for conflict would find her.

 

As angry as she was, she couldn’t deny to herself that it was a little exhilarating, though it would have been better with a proper enemy to fight or a friend at her side.

 

There is another ugly smelly little human hovel on this side and the door is still closed with no smoke or light coming through the windows. She sneaks carefully around the edge of the building, losing her balance briefly as her injured foot catches the edge of a sharp rock. Leliana had never been able to teach Zevran or Tabris how to unlock anything but the chests she had gifted them, so she is relieved to find this door is balanced on its latch. She opens it only a crack and slips inside.

 

Steal some clothes, some shoes if possible, and head back to the Keep. Maybe leave the country, head north to Antiva or West to meet Alistair in Orlais. Maybe further still to Seheron, if she was still welcome. At some point during this plan she would also need to clean the dirt from her cuts before they went sour. And a drink. 

 

The shack is dark and the floor slightly sticky. There’s enough light for her to see by, though,  and she steps quickly towards the closest chest, popping the lid and rifling through what feels like copper pieces and what may well be smooth river rocks.  _ No luck. _

 

She goes for a box on the floor instead, touching the unmistakable leafy head of a turnip.  _ Not here, either. _

 

She spots a bed through the cracked doorway of the next room and hurries towards it, figuring clothing would be nearby. They  _ must  _ have extra clothing, right? Even in the alienage Tabris had trousers, a skirt, a tunic  _ and  _ a dress. 

 

She had hardly touched the wardrobe at the back of the room before a voice spoke up from corner. “Who’s there?”

 

Tabris freezes for a heartbeat before whirling around. 

 

It's an old shem woman and she's holding a sword. It takes only a moments assessment of her stance to know that she doesn't know how to use it, and that her wide, vacant-looking eyes must be blind in the dark. The room is small, though, and it would only take one wide swing to catch her, and no skills at all to maim her when she has no armour. 

 

She pitches her voice low and calm, like a Chantry sister reciting the chant of light. “I  _ don’t  _ want to hurt you.”

 

It sounds alright to her own ear but somehow it sends the woman into a panic. She shrieks for help even as she swings the sword and only instinct gets Tabris out of the way in time, sprawled messingly on the ground to avoid the irregular arc. The sword buries itself in the bedpost and the angle is bad enough that the crone can not pull it out right away.

 

Tabris, Hero of Ferelden and Warden Commander, naked and bloodied and  _ scared _ , pushes the old lady down and runs away.


	3. Chapter 3

 

The sun is setting again and Tabris wonders if they think she is a deserter. 

 

Can a commander desert during a time of peace, really? When there is no danger or war or Blight, when they see her as the toughest of them all, will they  _ really  _ think she’s run away? 

 

She spits on her fingers to try to work the cut on her foot clean. There are a dozen more now, her arms sliced up by the trees and bushes she has scrambled through at some point, and a stinging sort of rash on her hip that she isn't sure where she earned. Her foot is hot and throbbing all the way to her knee and she doesn’t want to try for a clean spot of river walking on it. 

 

She works at the cut with small scooping motions, and after most of the black mud has been replaced with fresh blood she locates a bit of shiny brown glass embedded deep inside. If she’s lucky it’s a health potion, and if she’s  _ unlucky _ .. She probably would have noticed by now, honestly. The feel of it is unpleasant but the urge to throw up as she works it free seems almost unrelated, as though that was just a natural reaction to the stress of the day, rather than the pain.

 

When the cut is as clean as she can get it she lays back in the dirt, keeping it elevated to let it dry. The menfolk would probably be back to the village by now. Hopefully they would come into the woods looking for her with torches. Laying flat on her back, bloody and largely nude was probably about as non-threatening a picture as Tabris could possibly manage. So long as she kept her mouth shut, of course. If they patched her up and brought her to the Keep she might be able to get out of this situation without having to spend another night in the woods. 

 

They would probably want something in return. The idea wasn’t so upsetting in theory. Tabris would probably ‘play nug-a-nug’ with an  _ actual  _ nug in exchange for trousers if she had to spend another day out here.

 

Or a crocodile.

 

A  _ dragon _ .

 

Not a darkspawn though. The stink of them was probably the only thing worse than the pig-smell sweat of shems mixed with the odious rank natural to fishmongers. 

 

There is a chill in the air that was not there when she swam in the stream. Gooseflesh runs across her skin as the light fades and she grits her teeth to keep them from chattering. 

 

The owls are out again, friendly but ultimately unhelpful. Lightning bugs wink at her from the bushes. She watches their lazy trail through the air and has the sudden urge to ask Morrigan who they are showing off for. It seems a beacon for bats, to her. Maybe they  _ want  _ to be eaten. She remembers that an older woman from the alienage had somehow eaten a worm, once, that had tried to eat its way back out of her again. She grew thinner and thinner for weeks until the chantry took her off and found the thing. To hear tell of it, the worm was bigger and healthier than the woman by the time they pulled it out. She survived it only by the grace of the maker and the eagle eyes of the chantry sisters.

 

Maybe that's what she was doing, here. Waiting for the next shem to wander by so that she could beg to be eaten. 

 

She drifts off between blinks, only noticeable from the seemingly rapid movement of the moon. There is a distant shuffling, growing closer. Firelight is visible between the trees but they have missed her, several meters away and moving rapidly.

 

She licks her lips, considering, but a bone-deep shudder sets her teeth to chattering and makes the decision for her. “Hello?”

 

Her voice is husky and low, more so than usual from the cold and strain, but he stops all the same, raising his lantern to listen.

 

“Hello? I need help.”

 

Personally she would have  _ not  _ trusted someone saying something like that in the dead of night, but this human does, shuffling through the brush towards her until he is standing a few paces away. She stays where she is until he’s had a proper look at her, the picture of helplessness, hands out to her side to show she is unarmed. “I’m not going to hurt you.” she promises, slowly pushing herself up with cold-stiffened limbs. 

 

“I can see that.” the man has an odd look to his face and a scruffy beard, but more important is the sword he has resting on his shoulder. In the flickering light it's hard to tell it’s quality but a sword is a sword when it comes to flesh. “What happened to you?”

 

She wants to snap at him but she wants clothing much more. She swallows her pride and anger and forces her voice calm, though the stifled rage still makes her tone fluctuate oddly. “Got clubbed over the head.” she says, simply as she can. “Can’t walk. I need clothes. And a ride.”

 

“I bet you do.” The odd look twists in the torchlight and it’s a smile. His finger taps on the hilt of his sword but her eyes find the knife on his belt instead. No scabbard for the sword but a nice leather holder for his fish blade. “I’m gonna come look you over, alright?”

 

She nods and he comes close, a pleased sort of swagger to his step. His beard is more grey than blonde and he’s missing a tooth at the front, a black pit in his smile. The shem’s hand reaches for her head and she lets it, but rather than her cuts he finds the old puffy scars, trailing them from forehead to her teeth, parting her lips lightly with a thumb. “Ugly thing aren't you?” he sighs, but he’s still smiling. The sword on his shoulder shifts lightly as he stoops, and she is certain that she is more aware than he of its danger, how it would only need gravity for a well-sharpened blade to take her throat. “Aren’t you knife-ears supposed to be  _ pretty _ ?”

 

Tabris isn’t sure how he expects her to respond to that. She puts a hand on his hip, rubbing a thumb over the meat of it and setting the other on the seat of his pants. She doubts a dirty,  _ ugly  _ little  _ knife-ear _ could look sultry in this situation, but he hardly needs her to work for it. “Let's just skip this part.” she keeps her voice low so that she won't begin shouting, and her hands only tremble from the cold. “I’ll do it for the ride, okay?”

 

If the shem is surprised he doesn’t say anything. He sets the point of his sword into the dirt beside her like its a walking stick, undoing the string of his belt and pulling his cock out with no further fuss. She thinks he must have done something like this before. “Do a good job of it,” he says, stroking himself shamelessly. “and I’ll give you your ride.” 

 

There is a nasty sort of glee in his eyes, and Tabris hopes that there would actually be a horse involved.

 

It is a normal looking cock, really, but he holds it between thumb and forefinger as though even  _ he  _ doesn’t want to touch it. She holds his belt to keep his linens up rather than subject herself to the sight of any more of him, and stares the wormy thing down. It is not huge or small or rotten, really, so far as she can see. It’s functionally identical to Alistair's own, more or less, but for the fishy scent of his hands and pigsmell of his skin. Her friend always washed before he touched her, and she wonders now if he knew the way humans smelled or if Zevran had warned him. Tabris feels distinctly ill and she has done nothing yet but look at it. 

 

“And clothes?” she asks, wrapping hesitant fingers round the root of him and fighting a frown when it begins to shift and thicken.

 

“And clothes.” he promises. He moves the torch around as though trying to find the best angle to see her by, shadowing one side of her face. “Where is it you want to go, anyhow? Aren’t any elf clans round here that I’ve heard of.”

 

“Anywhere.” Preferably Antiva, if she really had a choice. _ As far from here as possible. _ “Anywhere they can help me.”

 

“I’ll help you, rabbit. You do right by me and I’ll bring you wherever you like in the morning.”

 

Tabris had every intention to do it. She  _ did _ . She had done it before for Alistair, a few times, and imagined doing so for others. She’d done it in Denerim. It wasn’t a big deal. She would do it. She definitely was going to do it.

 

But he grabbed her head in his sweaty, fish smelling paw, thumb digging into the throbbing bleeding lump on the front of her skull as he pushed her face against his his crotch with a growl of ‘ _ Get on with it, then _ !’ and from there it was instinct that took over.

 

The knife on his belt found its way into her hand, stabbing into his lower back, too low for his kidneys but the scrape of the blade against his pelvic bone sends him, screaming, to the ground. She was on top of him then, cutting,  _ stabbing _ , slicing pieces off of him and shouting louder than he could to drown him out.  

 

“ _ Fuck You,  _ **_Fuck_ ** _ You!!”  _ she can hardly hear either of them, blood on her tongue and throbbing in her ears. _ “Fuck Your Filthy Fucking Shem Fucker Village!! I’ll Wear Your Fuckign  _ **_Skin_ ** _ , You  _ **_Fucker_ ** _ , You  _ **_Fuck_ ** _ , You Filthy Fucking Piss-Ugly Son of a Bleeding Shem Whore!” _

 

His terrified eyes bulge from his face, white and shocked, flabby fleshy lips gaping. The cloth she clutches is red now and the shoulders are gold in her mind, the hot blood hitting her face is her own, and if he’s dead maybe no one will know who done him in and the alienage won’t burn and she’ll never,  _ never  _ have to go back. 

 

He goes quiet save for wet, guttural clicks and snorts. She comes back to herself with great heaving breaths and shaky hands. She is covered chest to knee in his filthy blood and the only real thought in her head in the moment was relief at how warm it was. 

 

Shouting ahead of her and sobbing moist pops below her. She remembers that she has training, skills, and a hundred dead darkspawn at her back, and Tabris holds the knife with both hands, putting her weight into it as she drives it up beneath in ribs and into his filthy bleeding heart. There is a sickly sort of  _ ‘crunch’  _ as it yields to her, and Tabris has never been sure whether it was the heart itself or the cartilage that made it. Whether she really heard the noise or if it simply travelled up to echo through her bones.

 

_ Up and  _ **_In_ ** _ , Vhenan. _

 

The filthy shem is dead but he wont know it for a few moments yet. 

 

He had dropped his torch in the grass and it’s light is nearly gone, but the clearing brightens as someone crashed through the bushes. Another shem, younger than the first, and he is screaming now at the sight of her. She knows she makes a gruesome picture and she bares her teeth in a snarl. 

 

“Keep the  _ fuck  _ away from me or you’re  _ fuckign  _ next you  _ Fuck _ !” 

 

He swings something at her and she thinks, for a moment, as the light hits it, that its a sword.

 

She thinks it for several more moments, when she dives away from the body and feels something slice into her back.

 

It catches and pulls at her flesh as she rolls away from it, like claws, ripping through her. She manages to keep a grip on the bloody knife but fails to get her feet under her on first or second attempt. It pulls her suddenly backwards and she shouts, feeling it ‘pop’ free of her back as he face lands in the dirt and she knows that it’s another of those filthy fucking boat hooks on a stick. She rolls further from it, the tacky blood on her body thickening into cold mud, and brandishes her knife, cursing a storm, but the man has snatched up his weapon again and dropped his own torch, grabbing up the body of her would-be rapist and dragging it back into the bushes.

 

He is yelling for help and she is shouting over him. “HE’S DEAD, SHEM!” she roars, throat raw and blood dripping down her back, impossible to check. She might be dying but it wont stop her scaring him off. “HE’S DEAD AND I’LL STICK YOU NEXT, I'LL WEAR YOUR  _ FUCKING SKIN _ , I'LL BURN YOUR SHITTY HOVEL TO THE _ FUCKING GROUND.” _

 

The shem is gone with the dead and dickless body of his friend but he is still shouting. More distant voice raise to meet him and Tabris scrambles onto her feet, but her foot burns and folds and will not carry her any longer. She crawls inelegantly, in the opposite direction of the village, as quickly as her arms can manage. She cuts her knees and after a distance has been reached she forces herself up to stagger between tree trunks. She rolls down a hill and through underbrush and stops only when her chin hits the ground and picking it up again seems like it might not be worth the effort.

 

She's freezing cold and shaking but her body is covered in sweat all the same. The salt agitates her cuts more than the dirt does.She has no idea how far she’s managed to get from the shems,  as distance and time pass strangely at a crawl, but she forces herself back up, going just a  _ little  _ ways further.  There is a tree, not amongst any clearing, crowded in with the rest of them, with an enticingly large gap beneath its trunk and an opening between the roots that seem to beckon like an embrace.

 

Tabris crawls inside amongst the prickly leaves and insects, protected from nearly every angle from the breeze. She turns and twists in painful wriggles, trying to keep too many places on her body off of the ground at once. Her knees tuck up against her chest and she sets the bloody knife just inside the entrance to her little den, like a talisman to ward off the gaze of any further humans.

 

She sleeps, off and on, waking at every noise. A nug hops by at some point, and the crunch of leaves sets her pulse to racing, but when she hears the unmistakable squeaking she squeaks back. It's not a perfect impression, just a sucking of her teeth, but the nug is dumb enough to come closer anyways. She stays still until it is within arms reach before whipping out her arm and grabbing it by its large, fleshy ear. Its screeches and claws at her but she manages to drag it inside and manhandle it against her chest, cradling it in the gap of her stomach and stroking its head until it calmed down.

 

It doesn't take it long to realize she is not eating it and is more than stupid enough to relax into her embrace. Its furless flesh is much cleaner than hers and she almost feels bad for touching it with the the flaky leftovers of the shems blood. Its warm, though, and once its grown used to her she digs her fingers between its hairless belly to warm them up to. Its squeaks lightly and lifts its ugly head to sniff around her nose. It licks a bit of her cheek but quickly shakes its head in disgust, nearly jumping out of its own skin in surprise, but she holds him tightly until he gets over it and puts its head back. 

 

“Stupid thing.” she mumbles, just to hear her own voice. “I have a knife, you know. I wouldn't need it to kill you. If I had flint I’d start a fire, roast you over it. Roast Nug with Nothing Sauce. How does that sound?”

 

Its chitters gently and presses its face into her chest, nuzzling into whatever cushion it finds there. Good enough for naked little trash-rabbit to enjoy. That was something good to know at least. One point in her favour.

 

She sleeps beneath the tree and wakes covered in more crawly things than she would like to contemplate. Something is actively moving across the cut on her back and it feels like creeping fire. Her stomach is growling but louder is the gentle snores of the nug. She's too dizzy and her foot hurts too much to consider crawling into the early morning sun just yet, so she opts to cover her eyes with her arm and go back to sleep.

 

When she wakes again the light is gentler but her head feels much worse. The nug has moved away from her and is sprawled out in front of the entrance to her den, plump and perfectly happy in its pale nudity. Tabris’ body gives a miserable shudder and she is about to pull the nug closer to her again before the sound of bootsteps make her freeze.

 

Two sets, from the sound of it, and it's difficult to hear them past her own pounding heart, but she lifts her head and cups her hands round them both, concentrating hard.

 

Men. Two of them. The clinking shuffle of armour, drawing closer.

 

“-- better than the wolves.” the mumbly drone of the voices finally coalesces into something mild and human. 

 

“Wolves don't have knives.” unmistakably dwarven, nasally and sharp at the vowels with the odd vocal fry they all seemed to affect. “And they can’t  _ plan  _ or hold grudges or kill you just to watch you bleed.”

 

“They have teeth, and numbers.” the accent makes is vaguelyl familiar and while she can’t place it, Tabris is certain that it's nothing good. “I'll take  _ one  _ mad elf over a pack of mad wolves any day.”

 

“They paid in gold for the wolves though!” They are drawing nearer, but from behind her. They can’t be following her tracks from that direction. They are headed away. “What are we gonna do with  _ fish _ ?”

 

“Cook it, I ‘spose.”

 

“Gold can buy  _ many  _ fish. Also  _ goods _ , and  _ services _ !” Tabris feels an odd longing for Oghren. “I guess I’ll have to content myself with just the warm glow of knowing I helped people in need.”

 

“ _ Or _ content yourself knowing you followed orders. Whatever works for you.”

 

They have passed her and are headed away by now. There are no dwarves at the Keep so they aren’t Wardens, and even if they were she doubts that they would be sending people out to patrol small villages for criminals when their commander had disappeared into the night. Who would even be in charge right now, without her? 

 

Hopefully someone with the skills to kill an archdemon but the sense not to end up killed by a bunch of fucking serfs with less coin than wits.

 

She is almost more tired than she had been when she fell asleep but she lays awake in her hole for hours, until she is certain that no one is nearby before slowly dragging herself out. Its slow going with her throbbing foot ( _ and back and head and hip and arms and and and _ ) but she makes it into a patch of sunlight, sprawling back against the tree. The nug follows her out, watching her with curiosity for a few long moments before hopping away. She entertains a fantasy for a while that it might drag her a turnip from some shems garden or an abandoned waterskin left under a bush. If it did such a thing, she tells herself, then she would owe it her life and would dedicate herself entirely to its service as its noble naked knight.

 

It doesn’t come back, of course. Probably eaten by an owl along the way.

 

She should have eaten it first. Raw Nug with Nothing.

 

The cut on her foot, when she thinks to check it, is dirty again, the skin around it red and inflamed, hot to the touch. She prods at the swelling, hissing in pain as she finds an overraw nerve. It doesn’t stop hurting until she reaches her ankle, and her mouth is too dry to spit-clean it by this point. Hardly seems worth the effort when it probably wont be seeing a stream anytime soon. 

 

She rolls onto her knees and begins to crawl again, in no particular direction. She has no real idea where she is going anymore, or where she is, but maybe, if she's  _ lucky ( _ which she knows by now, she isnt _ ) _ , she’ll find a road to pass out on and wait for a carriage to pass by. Tabris is beyond worrying about arriving at the Keep nude, by now. She doesn't care what anyone thinks, she just wants it to be done with.

 

A long crawl on shaking limbs, an indeterminate passing of time. Rowdy voices and the smell of campfire. She pulls herself up to her feet, knees shaking, and shouts. The word might have been ‘help’ but she isn't entirely sure anymore.

 

A face through the trees and several shems in light armour rush forward, swords drawn. Shining swords and clean leather, clean hair. Healthy faces. Bodyguards of some sort, wary and frightened. Of her? They  _ should  _ be frightened. She’s probably killed more shems than she’s ever let live. Her legs can hardly hold her up. 

 

“Serah?  _ Ser _ ? What are you doing out here?  _ Serah _ !” 

 

“Look at her-- she’s  _ wild _ .” one of them hisses.

 

“She’s  _ hurt _ .”

 

A hand grasps her shoulder, the stinging cuts flaring to life under the firm grip and Tabris strikes out without thinking, cursing and fighting. Her knuckles hit metal and sharp pain snakes up her arm, but they release her and let her fall back and away against the closest tree.

 

The shems don't want to come near her now, and she doesn't want them to so it's all well and good by her. “Clothes.” she rasps. “And water.”

 

They confer with their eyes and one steps away and back, towards the crackling fire. They return a minute later, throwing a tunic on the ground as well as a water skin. She moves towards it but they bark at her to stay back, pointing their blades her way. “Wait till we’ve stepped back.” they order her and she knows from the look in his eye that he want nothing to do with her. She waits until they are beyond the treeline before falling on the waterskin and pulling great mouthfuls from its lip. She drinks it all, feeling sick from the sudden volume, but she doesn't want them to deny her even one sip.

 

When its empty she tosses it to the closest shems feet and he steps away like its dirty. It probably is, now. 

 

“Keep it.” he says, and she knows he thinks something is wrong with her. _ Beyond the obvious.  _ There is a clattering behind him, the breaking of camp and the hiss of a cookfire being snuffed. “We’re leaving. Don't follow us.”

 

Her head swims and she covers her worse eye with her hand, forcing the man into focus. “Take me with you.”

 

“No.” He doesn’t wait a breath.

 

“I’ll pay you.”

 

“You’ve nothing to offer.”

 

She thinks that he might change his mind if he knew what she could give him. Starting at a sword made from something a little sharper than fucking  _ iron a _ nd ending with a cup of poisoned, ritual blood. She keeps her mouth closed and pulls the tunic over her head. It will do her little good if she spends another night out here, but it's built for someone much wider and taller than she, so it reaches nearly to her knees. The security that a thin piece of linen gives her is almost overwhelming and she must scowl at her knees to keep from tearing up. Mustn't waste the water, after all.

 

She can hear the voices from the campsite more clearly now. They are talking about mad wolves and wild rabbits, travelling through the night to avoid the sickness that plagues her, putting armour on the horses legs.

 

“Which way is town?” she asks. It doesn't matter which one. The guard answers too quickly, pointing off to the west, and she knows it is a lie, for whatever good that will do her. 

 

When they are gone she limps her way to their abandoned campsite, pressing leaves to the still-glowing wood piled up in its center, but despite her best efforts the cherry will not catch. She finds a few small radishes beneath a bush and doesn’t bother wondering if they had been left for her intentionally before she eats them.

 

She is upright but fading with the sun when she hears the footsteps. They come from behind, following her trail. Tabris gets herself onto a log, elbows to knees and jaw set in defiance as the creeping tiptoe of humans move through the brush to surround her. She cradles the knife near her stomach so that they can not take it if they rush her, and digs her good foot into the dirt, ready to launch herself away if need-be.

 

It’s an elf that comes out and for a moment Tabris is stunned and dismayed. She has a bow in hand but no arrow knocked. She’s old, the droop at the tip of her ears and the fine laugh lines just at the edge of her eyes speak to it, but the rest of her face is smooth and clear. She looks strong and so much more alive than any elder Tabris had ever met back in the alienage. The green tattoos on her face mean  _ Dalish  _ and Tabris wonders, not for the first time, why she hadn’t runned to join the dalish elves when she still had a chance.

 

“Hello.” the woman says, and there is humour and youth in her wizened voice. 

 

“Hello.” Tabris replies.

 

“Are you the one that’s been causing all the fuss, then?” her white hair has been twisted into ropey strands and they move in an interesting way as she turned her head. 

 

Tabris would like to pretend that she doesn’t know for sure, but… “Yeah.” she nods her head and looks round herself for the others. She can just catch the glint of pauldrons around one tree, but that doesn't account for the at least three footsteps that had come around. “Yeah. It’s me.”

 

The elf nods her head, bouncing a little from foot to foot. “Still got that knife on you?”

 

She holds it up and knows the blood still staining it is proof enough. Not to mention all of it that shows on her skin and arms, out from above  _ and  _ below her tunic. “Yep.” pops the plosive ‘p’ for the fun of it. She wasn’t going to apologize. She’d do it a dozen times more if she was given the chance. She’d have gotten the second shem, too, if she could’ve. The speckle faced bitch that clubbed her as well.

 

“You gonna stick me with that, then?”

 

Tabris shakes her head but honestly, she doesn’t want to lie. “Probably not.”she says instead, which is as close to ‘ _ i hope not _ ’ as she can get just then. “Stay far enough back. I can’t walk anyways.”

 

She straightened her leg and lifts her foot up to show the angry swelling and the dalish woman wrinkles her nose at the sight and takes it for truth. “Fair enough.” she says, waving her hand at one of the trees. A dwarf-shaped shadow detaches from it and moves quickly away, footsteps rapidly fading off. “You just stick right there while we wait out our boss and we’ll figure what to do about you, yeah?”

 

Tabris nods in agreement and puts the knife back in her lap. 

 

The forest around them is quiet enough, the birds singing only distantly. Even so it is long minutes before her third hunter steps out from the tree, massive armour clanking as he stretches sore muscles and sets a massive maul across his back. 

 

“You don't mind if I sit, do you?” asks the shem, waving his hand at the log across from her. “We’ve been scouring the woods all day for you, you see, and frankly, I’m beat.”

 

Any ease that had entered Tabris at the reassuring sight of a fellow elf flees at the sight of him and the knife is in her hands within a moment. She’s on her feet and snarling, feet spread in fighting form and it  _ hurts  _ but if she can get his hammer, if she can  _ carry  _ it like this, if she take it and use it she knows, she  _ knows  _ she can make it back to the Keep. If he touches her, looks at her, breathes in her direction she’ll cut him, she’ll cut it off, it doesn't matter if she wasn’t trained with a knife, unarmoured, she’ll  _ kill  _ him--!

 

The shemlen doesn't come closer, holding up his hands and backing a few steps up for good measure. His face is placid, like he’s not actually all that surprised by her reaction, and not at all scared of her. “Okay, no sitting.” he speaks slowly and she wants to throw the sodding knife in his ugly fucking shem pig face. He seems to sense it and takes one more step away. The elf hasn't moved but she holds the bow with both hands, now. 

 

“Stay back.” Tabris grinds the words between clenched teeth. The sharp pain of her foot has changed to a hot steady pulse. The dirt is wet beneath it but she hasn’t fallen over yet so it will work for now. “I swear, I  _ swear  _ I'll  _ fucking-- _ !”

 

“Skin me, gut me, yeah, I  _ got  _ it. Loud and clear.” He nods sagely and whether or not he believes that she  _ could  _ do it, he definitely understands that she’ll  _ try _ . She’s glad of that at least. He doesn’t misunderstand the situation. No room to misinterpret the blade, even if her stance is shakier than she’d like. “You can sit if you like, I’ll stay over here, alright?”

 

Tabris doesn’t sit because she doesn’t think she will be able to get back up again. The sun crawls across the sky and the elf spins her bow in lazy, fidgety arcs. 

 

The old elf can not seem to handle silence, and finally bursts it with an overloud question. “So are you Dalish then or not?”

 

“ _ Dalish _ .” The human is clearly controlling himself, his expression bland and hands out to his sides. Tabris’ hands twitch as she refocuses on him, but he’s exuding ‘ _ not a threa _ t’ as hard as he possibly can. She doesn’t trust it. She’d done that, too.

 

“I’m just asking--!”   
  
“She  _ doesn't _ .  _ Want _ . To talk to us.”

 

A part of herself, a few layers deep, the part that had sat bored in her office only a couple days before this, wishes that this shem had been working under her as a Warden. He had some sense. He was here to kill her and she would rip his face off with her teeth before she let him do it, but he had sense. No future, though, and blood as red as any others.

 

The rest of the stalemate passes in complete silence. The shem doesn’t twitch his hand near his weapon and the elf spins her bow and looks anywhere but at her. The sun moves. The leaves crunch. Someone is coming.

 

The steps are overly heavy, coming too quickly for their weight. More steps accompany the first, quicker and lighter and clearly trying to keep pace. The crunch of a thick branch snapping underfoot. No jangling armour or barking dogs.

 

He steps into the small clearing  and he is  _ massive,  _ with horns wide and tall enough to shake a low hanging branch. One eyed, bare chested, and taking up all the air in the clearing without even getting close. He stops when the human puts a hand out, the back of his gauntlet barely tapping the giants stomach, even though the shems arm is straight out at shoulder height.

 

“Careful, Chief.” the human drawls, and more come up behind them now, two men and a the dwarf again, fanning out with their hands gripping hilts and faces tense. “She’s afraid.”

 

“ _ Fuck _ you!” Tabris snarls, holding her ground. Her foot is numb and she does not trust it to carry her through anything she’s ever practiced. There are more of them then she expected, three shem men, the dwarf and the giant. Healthy and clean the lot of them.  Well-fed, rested and armoured. She couldn’t take them like this. She might not have been able to take them alone in ideal circumstances. “I can’t kill you all but the  _ first  _ one to fucking  _ touch  _ me--!”

 

“Hey hey, cool it, Kid.” The massive man doesn’t have to shout to shut her down, his voice is as big as he is. Tabris closes her mouth but doesn’t relax at all, eyes darting between each member of his group, looking for sudden movements. One shem is moving more than the others, his hand keeps going to the pouches on his belt, but he hasn’t unbuckled any yet. “Relax, we aren’t interested in getting gutted for no reason. We just wanna talk.”

 

“You’re here to kill me.” He can’t lie, she heard them, she  _ knows. _

 

He just nods though, scratching the scruff of his beard with one hand. He’s missing the tip of his little finger. “That’s what they hired us to do, yeah.”

 

“They’re paying you in  _ fish _ .” she spits the word out and her stomach rolls in distaste. She feels a little faint but she stays upright, picking up the blade when she realized it has sagged. “Fuck off.  _ Fuck off. _ I'm not worth the trouble, you want to lose more fingers for  _ fish _ ?”

 

“Not so much for the fish, but for the violently maimed and murdered husband and father.” His tone is casual and she thinks he might have moved half a step closer, but she’s not sure when. Her breath comes faster but her legs feel more steady, the pain is fading away with the panic. 

 

“The  _ fisherman _ .” she takes a small step back and her legs manage to hold her. Carefully over the log without looking at it, one less thing to trip over. Sten had barely seemed to feel a punch to the jaw, but she thought that this Qunari’s eye ought to be squishy as anyone else's. “He deserved it. Filthy fucking  _ shems _ , I JUST WANTED HELP!”

 

“Was that before or after you broke into their houses and threatened to burn the village down?”

 

She didn’t really know, at this point, and it sounded like a hypothetical question anyways. “ _ Fuck _ you.”

 

“Yeah that’s what I figured.” 

 

One of the shems at the edge of her vision moves, the bulkier blonde, and she turns to brandish her knife, but before she can so much as shout the great Qunari is on her, too fast for his size, faster than Sten by half. She lifts her arm, hoping he’ll grab at her wrist so that she can slice at his fingers, her other arm reaching for his horn so she can swing into his throat. 

 

He is ready for it, or he’s lucky, it doesn't matter because he gets her by the fist instead, massive fingers crushing hers. The knife turns inwards towards her own stomach but she’s grabs his horn, kicking off from the ground and twisting, curling her torso around their hands until her back is to him. Her wrist hurts but the blade is flat to her stomach, she sinks her teeth into the arm that wraps around her and he is forcing her to the ground,a cage of flesh and muscle. She shouts and twists more, kicking and scratching and shes between his legs, scrambling back. He nearly tips over and she is back on her feet again, only for hands to grab her shoulders, pushing her down- but she still has the knife. 

 

She reaches back blind, grabs a fist full of short hair and punches her arm up, aiming the blade at the skull in her hand. It screeches as it glances off metal instead, a pauldron maybe, but she is quick to try again.

 

Her knees hit the dirt as the human shoves her away with an alarmed shout. She doesn't know if she got him but something falls over her back, a forearm across her neck and her arm and the blade pinned beneath her. She slams her head back but it doesn't connect with anything, and more weight comes on her legs and arms. She curses and shrieks and bites anything that gets near her mouth, but it doesn’t help. They are twisting her limbs behind her and she catches meat between her teeth, tastes blood. Her threats don’t even make sense anymore but she doesnt stop until a frigid chill and sudden calm wash through her bones like water, sagging into the dirt.

 

Of course they had a mage. Of  _ course _ .

 

She lets the magic lull her, once she realizes what it is. It reminds her of Wynne’s soothing presence. Not as good, of course, and already fading, but like a concentrated dose of her after too long without it. 

 

They pull and yank at her until she’s propped up against a tree with her arms folded and bound behind her. Her legs are straight out in front with the rope around her knees, just a bit too tight for comfort, but she can’t really complain. They are all watching her, and the calming spell they cast only lets her be a  _ little  _ annoyed to see they are, for the most part, no worse for wear. 

 

“You done, kid?” their leader asks her, more amused than wary. His group watches her more suspicion but it’s not as though she can do much from this point on.

 

“Fuck off.” she tells him, because it would be dishonest to pretend she wasn’t still thinking it.

 

“I’ll get right on that, as soon as we finish with our conversation.” He jerks a thumb back at the shem that had waited with her and the elf. “See that asshole back there? That's Krem. He’s my right hand man. One of the best fighters I’ve ever met south of Par Vollen and  _ you  _ almost shoved a  _ knife  _ through his face. I’ll have you know that he could’ve killed you easily but he was trying not to hurt you. He’s a good guy to a fault. What do you have to say about that?”

 

Did he want an apology? “The village hired you to kill me.” she said plainly, and warm anger bloomed in her stomach but it cooled before it could float its way up to her chest. “For fish.”

 

“Now see, we haven’t exactly made up our minds about that quite yet. That’s why you’re head is still attached to your shoulders, making bad decisions for you.”

 

That.. made sense, more or less. “Good job on the non-lethal takedown.” she says, eventually. As close as she wants to get to ‘sorry’ if she can help it. “But if I weren’t half dead already you would’ve had to kill me, though.”

 

“You’ve got plenty of life left in you.” The Qunari makes a show of rolling his eyes but something in his shoulders relaxes nonetheless. “What's that accent I’m hearing, by the way. Orlais?”

 

“My mother.” she begins to fidget with the ropes on her arms. She can hardly touch them with the tip of her longest finger, let alone untie them, but she works at it anyways. “I’m from Denerim. The alienage. And Krem is Tevinter, isn’t he? Krem the Shem.  Don’t your kind usually attack on sight?”

 

“We’re a long way south of Seheron.” The Qunari tilted his head slightly and she knew that he could see the wriggling of her elbows. If he wasn’t going to stop her than she wouldn’t stop. “Long way from Denerim too. How old are you? Twenty Five?”

 

The dalish elf scoffed at the number, waving her bow like a staff and yes, of course it was a staff, wasn’t it? She could see the shiny of little gems along it, dirtied up and painted to look like bumps, but obvious now. “You’re not serious? She’s a  _ baby _ . Sixteen I wouldn't wager!”

 

“I’m nineteen.” She snaps and ah, yes, there is her anger again, sputtering to life like a fire from wet damp logs. “My namesday is in a few months if you’re so fucking curious. “

 

“So you’d've been married off just about two years ago, huh? Those scars on your face look like Mabari claws if i had to guess it, and they look  _ about  _ two years healed, too. And here you are,  _ all  _ the way down here, ready to gut any human that comes near you, huh?” The Qunari is too observant and Tabris tucks her shoulders up around her ears, looking at the scraped and ruined skin of her knees, the filthy blood and dirt that covered her thighs like they belong to someone else. “That what happened with the fisherman? Got too close so you gutted him?”

 

“I didn’t just gut him.” her voice is raw and the cool feeling of calm washing over her again  is a relief. “I  _ castrated  _ him.”

 

There are a few uneasy noises around the group, the loudest from the Dwarf who takes a half step back from her. Krem’s tones are even and calm as he crosses his arms across his chest. “Now doesn’t  _ that  _ paint a picture?”

 

The giant scratches his beard again and she thinks it might be a nervous tick. His eyes are closed in what must be a pantomime of deep thinking, which puts a bit of a suspicious tint to everything he does. “Alright. I got it.” he announces, aimed as much at his mercenaries as it is at her. “You can call me The Iron Bull. My group is called the Chargers. Not to put too fine a point on it, but are you looking for a job?”

 

The are scoffs and groans of disbelief around the group, but she keeps her eyes on The  _ Iron Bull _ . “...A job as in, am I looking to hire you?” an escort to the Keep would be nice, honestly, and if they didn’t have a horse then The Bull could probably carry her. She’d take it. She’d take anything at this point, maybe.

 

He laughs her off though, waving a hand. “Yeah I don't think you could afford us-- and considering we are working for  _ fish  _ these days that's really saying something.” She doesn’t think that's true but she is losing the will to argue. “Look. You stink of fever and fear but you hold that knife like you know how to use it. In better health you’d’ve gotten away from me when I grabbed you, and you almost got that dull shitty fishermans knife into my throat back there even still.”

 

He moves closer and her heart barely picks up speed as he lifts the sleeve on her tunic, eyeing the many scars that crisscross the places armour doesn't cover, the bruises where it does. “You weren’t sitting pretty as some noblewoman's lady in waiting with arms like these.” he says, and she realizes that he is looking at the bulge of her muscles, hard earned with the daily exercises Sten had taught her. “You’re a hard worker that knows how to defend herself. For you to be out here something went wrong in your alienage. Probably the same thing that goes wrong in all of them, in the end. Whoever owned it didn’t take care of you and yours, right? And you either couldn’t or wouldn’t keep your head down. You killed them. And you had to run. Am I close to the mark here?”

 

He is, and even past the calming spell her stomach crawls its way into her throat. It misses a lot. The year spent on the run, gathering allies for the battle against the archdemon, months spent miles underground. Stumbling into the light and sobbing as she felt Thedas turn and spin beneath her feet, trying to throw her into the sky.

 

Men twice her age alternatively bowing to her, foisting a title onto her she never asked for while whispering behind their hand that she didn’t deserve it.

 

Her breath is coming out in tiny pants as her heart pounds against her chest. He is still waiting for an answer and she nods once, looking at her bloody knees. _ Close enough. _

 

“Maybe the Chargers have a few too many humans in it for your comfort,” the Bull says, and his voice is almost gentle, in a loud sort of way. He towers over her but it doesn't feel threatening. “But you’ve run all this way and I can tell you’d do  _ anything  _ to keep from going back to Denerim, including living in the woods like a wild fucking animal, stabbing any  _ shem  _ that comes your way. Join up with us and we’ll take you further west than you could walk.”

 

_ The Wardens could send you west too.  _ A voice in her ear that sounds, oddly enough, like her father.  _ You could send yourself. You’re the  _ **_Warden Commander_ ** _. _

 

She licks her lips as tries to think. “What would it entail?”

 

The Iron Bull smiles like she’s already agreed. “I’m in charge. I make the decisions, the negotiations, and you just do what you’re told. You do what I say, and only hurt who I tell you to hurt. We take care of our own here and everyone pulls their own weight. Not too complicated, right?” he flashes her a smile and she sees his canines are sharp. 

 

Sten never smiled with teeth, and she's suddenly a bit dizzy, trying to imagine it. 

 

“Just… be cool. And try to act a  _ little  _ less crazy than you’ve been for however the hell long you’ve been out here.”

 

It’s her mother's voice in her ear, telling her how to plant her feet and swing a broadsword, that convinces her. An entire childhood learning how to defend herself, chopping holes in the back wall of their shack as it pressed against the edge of the the alienage, her mother’s tales of glory in the mock tournaments of Val Foret. 

 

Cut down in the shems streets on her way to work with no explanation for who had done it or why.  _ Years  _ of her father telling her to keep her head down, get married, stay home where she would be safe. The Arl’s sons eyes as she cut the sneer from his face.

 

_ Up and  _ **_in_ ** _ , Vehnan, the heart is deeper than you think. Push until you hear a  _ **_pop_ ** _ , and then run as fast as you can. _

 

_ Your mother was a fiery woman. She would have made an excellent Grey Warden. I never made the offer, though. Valendrian convinced me it would be better for her here, in the alienage, with her family. _

 

“I can live with that.” she says, quietly, and The Iron Bull roars his approval. The others take a moment to join him, first Krem, then the elf, then the dwarf. The other shems reactions are more reserved but they don't argue. The Iron Bull is in charge, as he said, and he could decide who to trust. Not them. Not her.  

 

When the cheers die down and even Tabris is faintly smiling the twitchier shem steps forward, pulling a flask from his belt. “If youre all about done can I please take a look at your  _ bloody  _ foot before the whole damn thing falls off?”


	4. Chapter 4

 

They lay her flat in a wagon and carry her west. They celebrate her joining with mugs of pale, strong ale that dull the pain of the shem’s stitchwork but not the taste of his potions. The Bull says his name is  _ actually _ ‘Stitches’ (despite the mans protests) and his manner is so gruff and the booze so good that Tabris does not mind letting him look her over, so long as she looks away. He tells her the foot is ‘a foregone conclusion’ but she has beaten the odds before and continues drinking, so he doesn't argue the point further. They cluster their tents in a circle, ‘her’ wagon on the inside of it and she enjoys the night under the stars, buzzed and happy for the first time in a long while. There is dried meats and breads that they portion out without argument and she thinks it might be some of the best she’s eaten.

 

Rocky The Dwarf takes first watch when the rest go to bed, and he sits beside her, telling her stories about the ‘nug-humping idiots’ back on Orzammar and how he had  _ gallantly  _ tricked and schemed his way onto the surface. She snickers whenever she recognizes someones name, too buzzed to keep that information close to her chest, but he doesn’t seem to notice anything. He seems like he is just be happy to have someone new around to complain to.

 

Dalish the Dalish Elf takes second watch, after Stitches wakes briefly to check on her. She hums a little tune and calls her  _ ‘dahlen’  _ and sends her to sleep with a spell.

 

Tabris wakes miles down the road with a blanket being pulled over her face. She is alternately hot and cold and everything in her body hurts. It’s not a hangover, she hasn’t had one since her first month on the road with Alistair, but it feels like she might be dying. 

 

“I'm not dead yet.” she croaks, suddenly frightened that the shadows moving  past the thin linen have given up on her already.

 

“Shh, you’re fevers gotten worse. Stay quiet.” It takes her a minute to know the voice, but then the unmistakable roar of The Iron Bull’s rings out in boisterous greeting, and she remember Stitches. “Wardens on the roads. We’ll be on again in a tick but we can’t afford to be stopped right now.”

 

She pretends to be asleep and the cart never pauses. Her men are slacking off.  _ Someone else's problem now _ . The thought makes her giddy, but that’s probably the fever.

 

The cart swings and dips below her like a boat on wild seas and more than once she has to have someone lever her up over the side to vomit. She is a shivering mess by the time they reach an inn and Dalish helps to wash her clean. She passes out somewhere around the halfway mark and wakes ages later in the middle of a retelling of Rocky’s nug-humping cousins.

 

Within a week she loses her foot and within a month she has a new one. She stomps around campsites in a knee-high boot whose sole is filled with iron, no worse for wear (in her own opinion) and in high spirits.  She takes about a dozen night watches in a row to make up for all the ones she’s missed and by now no one fears that she will wake them in the night with a blade to their throat, though they still pretend she  _ might _ .

 

They give her the fisherman’s knife back and she throws it in a bog. She replaces it with something she steals from a napping guardsmen in the Dales. Krem ‘teaches’ her to use his war hammer and as soon as she is able to internalize planting herself on her  _ real  _ foot rather than the one she used to have she is a near expert with the thing. It's much like her battle-axe, after all, but the crunch of crates being obliterated beneath it is surprisingly satisfying.

 

They bring her to a beautiful place with tall and lovely trees and beds of clover in place of grass. She takes the final blow on a dragon that find there, her hammer falling across its neck. The meat lasts for weeks and the bones fetch a price that will take ages to spend. Tabris spends days carefully carving the skin off the thing and they roll it up in bundles like hay. They call her ‘Skinner’ after that, and she is laughing, drenched in dragons blood from toe to top, and realizes they had never once asked her name before then, and that she had almost forgotten it.

 

They all get something made from dragon leather. Skinner gets a clawed foot carved from its tail bones , along with sharp fingered gloves which, soon after, split a scamming nobleman nearly in half. They hold up well to a sharpening but she is overeager to use them and eventually wears the tips in smooth.

 

There are years with the Chargers and through them she is wildly happy. There is a bar for her twenty-second nameday and she realizes, when she is neck deep in ale, that she has been a Charger longer than she ever was a Warden. There are more fights, more fun, more booze, and eventually enough shems dead by her blade that the small trophies she had found herself hoarding like a magpie are too cumbersome to carry. She buries the bag of rings, amulets, broken teeth and finger bones near an appropriately macabre alter she finds along the Storm Coast and doesn’t think of it again.

 

Five years into her service as a Charger there is a sweet dwarven woman near Lake Celestine that hates Orzammar as much as Skinner does. When she laughs her nose wrinkles up like a pigs and Skinner spends their short stay in her town with a perpetually red face. The others tease her mercilessly, Rocky especially. She earns a kiss by the end of it and spends half her trip through Orlais in a daze. No other dwarven women strike her quiet the same way as they travel the Free Marches but there is a Viddathari called Gaat that Bull warns here away from. She forgets about romance and remembers murder instead, and thinks as she sips her wine and hears the accents of travelling Antivan’s, that it’s probably what her mother would have preferred for her, anyways.

 

While they are near the Vimmark Mountains Dalish takes a break to visit her clan and brings Skinner with her. It’s an odd sort of vacation, featuring hard work and weak wine, but the hala love her instantly and they let her cuddle beside them during nights when the bonfires get too loud. 

 

She finds a statue just outside their campsite of a large and rough-cut dog, bearing its teeth and glaring outwards at the world beyond. There is menace in its face but a protective square to its shoulders. Skinner sits herself beside it, her own broad shoulder pressed against his, and sharpens her knife with the happy and all-too-foreign elves revelling behind her. Later, Dalish tells her that the dog is actually a wolf, and that he is shunned, not protective. Skinner, who knows that she is only a guest amongst the dalish rather than family, privately thinks that the wolfdog can probably be both.

 

She carves a tiny snarl into the hilt of her blade and the first time shem blood fills it the lines turn red and will not wash away. Its spiritual enough for her and less painful than a tattoo, so she keeps the knife at her side from then on as a good luck charm and cares for the blade meticulously.

 

“You couldn’t spend a  _ week  _ away from the shems without going native, could you?” The Iron Bull teases when he sees her carving her little symbol into the face of her hammer, but she just flashes a dangerous grin and keeps on carving. 

 

Grim disappears while they are staying in a smalltown tavern. Skinner does not see it until she is sneaking back into the room after a scrap with a few foulmouthed locals that would never know how lucky they were to survive it. She checks the bar for him before she gets Bull, and the Chargers spend the next two days scouring the town for him with little luck. They change inns and crowd into one room with the door bolted shut in case of intruders, and Krem takes first watch just inside it. They don’t think that Grim was taken, really, but Bull thinks acting as though he didn’t want to leave helps funnel their anger more constructively.

 

Skinner curls up against Bulls wide back and hopes that he will not return to Par Vollen anytime soon. He has never indicated how long he intended to be in the south, or how long he had been there in the first place, but she remembers that Sten had left every piece of armour she’d given him behind, as well as a note which she had, in her anger, crumbled up and eaten.

 

It had hadn’t been a particularly satisfying decision.

 

She dreams about death and laughing, singing darkspawn and wakes in a cold sweat with a hand at her shoulder. Tabris looks down at the armoured hand, following it to Alistair’s face.

 

“Skinner? Do you hear me?”

 

Krem’s brow is furrowed in concern and his lips pressed together in a frown. Skinner wipes the sweat from her forehead with shaking hands and he will not let her take second watch.

 

They leave the village in the morning, travelling as far and as quick as they can safely manage it. 

 

Her nightmares get worse and soon the Chargers have learned the rhythm of them well enough to catch her before she can leave her bedroll. Stitches gives her potions for dreamless sleep and she wakes well rested, even when the dreams occasionally follow her out of the fade.

 

When she admits to herself that it is The Calling that is living under her skin she feels no differently. She had already known.

 

There is a letter to Bull that warns them to avoid Kirkwall. Sometime later The Circles fall and Skinner does not let herself think about Wynn and whether she was young enough to have lived to see this happen.

 

Another letter reaches them in a tavern, and The Iron Bull soon leads them to the Storm Coast, where a group of Tevinter Mages have apparently been sneaking overseas by boat. He doesn’t say that they will be paid and he doesn’t pretend to have any motive beyond the necessary extermination of Tevinter Mages, but the Charges follow his orders without question, which means never questioning when and why the ravens come.

 

Dalish leads the lot of them by the hand past a barrier that hides a crumbling castle. There isn't much to it on the inside, but the sopping, moss covered halls stretch through a cave, through a mountain which dumps out into a valley against the shore, utterly stuffed full of mages and giants.

 

There isn't much room for strategy and even less time before they will be discovered. The Iron Bull orders them the Charge and the lot of them sweep down the hillside, startling their prey and taking down anyone that crosses their path. There are dozens of them but they are spoiled academics for the most part, not ruthless Mercenaries with decades of experience betweem them, trained up by the unbeatable Iron Bull. 

 

Skinner crushes the arms of a Magister who yowls like a cat when his magic backfires, sending fire licking up his own body and catching his own tongue ablaze. Something passes through her that has no effect at all and she spins on her heal, slamming her hammer into the torso of a human who had fadestepped his way into her range.

 

A knife to the face of one magister, another, another. She’s grabbed from behind and her skull crushes their nose, their hand is flops to the ground and her arm is soaked through. The mages are fleeing and the ground shakes as a Giant is released from its chains and lumbers towards them. Bull roars in triumph and runs, faster than something his size should ever move, and he launches into the air, his axe sinking into the giants face. It hits the ground with a crash loud enough to muffle the Chargers cheers, and what few mages are left have scrambled into boats and pushed themselves away from land to brave the terminal sea.

 

There is hardly time to celebrate, the blood on their weapons and armour still warm, before a crack of thunder shakes the world around their ears and an explosion of light casts the battlefield in green. She thinks that it is the mages for a moment but the echo rolls through the valley more than once, a distant storm. She scales a wagon left behind by the Vints, for what little height it will give her, and can see a great green hole in the sky, miles away.

 

The hole in the sky stretches and warps for hours. It is too far to reach but Bull, nonetheless, will not stop watching it even as he orders them to gather everything the mages had left behind. Anything with writing is set aside and anything worth selling is crowded into wagons. Skinner adds a single ugly, warped ring to her bulging belt and ignores the whispering in her ear that tells her to walk towards the great green light. 

 

By the time they are through the castle again and halfway towards the nearest town the hole in the sky explodes again before suddenly calming. It does not shrink or close, but the spinning clouds and angry, sucking winds lessen and Dalish lets out a small, relieved cry. It is not gone but it looks more like a green star now than an angry god, and more than one member of the Chargers ducks their heads in prayer.

 

Skinner leads her horse to Bulls side and watches him watch the light. “Anything you’ve ever seen, Chief?” she asks, voice low so as not to draw attention to them. 

 

He turns, looking her over once, and she wonders for a moment if he can hear the whisper too. “You still in Denerim during the Blight?”

 

The question startles her and it takes her long moments to parse what he is asking. She hadn’t been, but had she? She was, but only at the end, and with Soris and Shianni-- no, the slavers. “Ah,” she looks back at the light, squinting to see if he has spotted something she hasn’t. “You’re asking about the Archdemon, aren’t you?”

 

He nodded, a large and slow movement with his heavy horns. “You see it?”

 

_ I did everything but strike the killing blow. _ The memory was hazy with time, though, and it's hard to remember her place in the battle now, only the smell of the alienage, her voice raw as she ordered frightened troops forward, losing every single dwarf but Oghren. The ay the mages sobbed and begged, scattering as demons stormed towards them.  “It wasn’t green, if that’s what you’re thinking. Didn’t glow either.” 

 

“Then I’m as lost as you are.”

 

They sell their wares to shopkeepers who have it in their heads that they ought to be generous, come the End Times. They turn a pretty penny and the bar is wild with shems looking for any sort of distraction. 

 

The Bull gets and sends a dozen ravens and the night sky is so full of them that it seems like the Light had sucked up the stars. On a walk she spots a pile of feathers in a gutter, a taven with an arrow through its neck. The letter, when she unrolls it, concerns someone's fears about a relative who had been attending the Conclave, but Skinner gives it to Bull anyways in case it was written in code. 

 

Rumour says that the hole in the sky is a door to the Fade and that Andraste herself had flung a messenger through it. He glows with holy energy, apparently, and had been the one to stop it spreading. Within days daily life returns to normal for the small villages but for rumours of small green tears in the air. People spread the word about them, marking them on maps, and in the coming weeks The Bulls tells them that Andraste’s Herald has begun some sort of holy war on the south, heading something called The Inquisition. He’s hand glows with the same ‘holy light’ as the great breach in the sky, and he holds the power to close the smaller ‘rifts’ in his palm. The Chantry says it’s heresy and, naturally, disavows him immediately.

 

Bull sends Krem to the Herald with an offer of service, and not long afterwards the lot of them are climbing the frigid southern mountains, pledging their service to the cause and setting up tents outside its walls. There's a tavern on the grounds that is home to a dwarf with stories better than the ale and an elf that weedles a few stories from her as well. She sees the Herald of Andraste there from time to time, a fine boned dalish archer who looks more like a painting than a man. It's not hard to believe that he could have been sent to by some sort of god, but Skinner finds it hard to believe that it would be the bride of the maker.

 

He comes near her, once or twice, but she keeps her head in her drinks and herself outside the walls during the day. It wasn’t her war, after all, and only The Iron Bull could command her.

 

The ever-raucous laughter and dancing in the tavern drowns everything else out, but when she lays in her tent at night the singing in her blood grows ever louder. 

 

There is too much to do during the day and its natural that the Chargers would end up at the training grounds with the newer recruits. It’s fun to cluster together as they do their exercises and drills, betting on who will win the mock battles the trainers always set up and being catty when someone always, inevitably, hurts themselves. Stitches has his work cut out for him as one of the few decent healers in an army still in its infancy with big ambitions.

 

It’s a coincidence when it happens. She and Krem are having a push-up contest with a cheering crowd gathered round them, both in full armour with weapons strapped to their back. It’s incredibly unfair, of course, but years of arguing between them has not yet cleared up whether Krems pauldrons or her stupidly heavy hammer are more of a handicap, and until one of them pulled more strongly ahead in wins they would just have to keep competing. 

 

This time it is Skinner that wins and she roars in victory, picking up a pretty dwarven lady who had been cheering extra loud for her and spinning her around in the air as though she were not ready to collapse. From past the freckled, blushing face she meets the eyes of shem she does not know. 

 

But from his stunned expression, he certainly seems to know  _ her _ .

 

She sets the woman on her feet and stares him down, but he looks more confused than anything else and a moment later shakes his head and claps for her as well. It's the captain, or whatever his title is, the shem with the furry coat forever yelling at the new recruits when they slacked off. She had seen him before and made little note of him, but when the crowd disperses she makes her way back to her tent. It would take no real genius to guess where she was, if someone wanted to see her, and she spends the rest of the day sitting on her bedroll and playing with her knife. No one comes for her but her shoulders don't relax until she hears Bull fall asleep, her signal to do the same.


	5. Chapter 5

The Herald secures an alliance with the rebelling army of Mages. It's good news for The Inquisitions numbers, and Dalish, at least, is please. Their own camp is soon crowded in by a hundred tents or more, stretching out all the way to the frozen lake. The chatter and shouting and singing is endless and the faces too numerous to keep track of. Rocky complains that the bar is overcrowded now by Mages who have never before had more than a single mug of wine, now free to drink as much as they pleased but with no experience handling it. The kitchens are overrun, the training ground overcrowded, and after the third day spent avoiding crowds and losing track of her team, Skinner stops leaving her tent.

 

It wasn’t really a decision, though. Bull had left for the Hinterlands with the Herald and she hadn’t slept well the night before for the incessant, never ending singing. She stays laying down for an hour after she wakes, her fingers in her ears, then another hour with the blanket over her head. When the sun is high enough overhead to glare through the hole in the edge of her tent she sits up and polishes her boots with more force than strictly necessary. The dinner bells ring and the chatter around camp dies to a dull enough roar for her to sneak to the latrine, but soon she is curled up on her bedroll again in the dark, sick with the knowledge that the singing had followed her away from camp just as loud as it was now.

 

She was dying, and Deaths Calling was only getting harder to ignore it.

 

Stitches comes by on the second day and she knows that it must have been hard for him to get away from the medical tents within Havens walls, but she snips and complains enough so that he won’t worry. He doesn’t find anything wrong with her but gives her half a lemon to eat ‘just in case’ and advises her to get some sleep. 

 

She can’t make herself sleep, but she does eat the lemon, wondering if the song of the Calling would be quieter underground.

 

Warden Commander Tabris dreams of an Archdemon, and Skinner wakes up outside of camp with bile on her tongue. She coughs and vomits up very little against the side of an unlucky rock, and when she turns around The Bull is behind her, studying The Breach.

 

“Do you know you always sleepwalk downhill?” he asks her, waiting until she has a mouthful of snow to give her a moment to think about her answer. “Sorta ‘up’ this time, though. You must really be turned around.”

 

“I forgot to take my foot off.”

 

He hums, because that much is obvious. He doesn't look at her until she feels more collected, but when he does his face is tired and lined with concern.

 

She flexes her toes in the snow, but her foot is too numb to feel it. “How were the Hinterlands?”

 

“Full of demons. Probably less stressful than Haven, at the moment.”

 

“I could go for a little demon slaying right about now.”

 

“You’d be better off getting some sleep.”

 

She balances on her dragons foot easily, but the flesh one seems to crumple when she touches it to the ground. She pulls it back beside her, just off the ground like an unusually graceless goose. “My foots numb.” she says, because even when she lost the other one she never once said ‘ _ I can’t walk’. _

 

“You were getting pretty uncoordinated in the final stretch.” Bull offers an arm, and between his strength and her experience with injuries the trip back and away from the Breach is at the pace of a leisurely stroll. “Krem thinks you're sick.”

 

“Stitches doesn’t. He had a look at me.”

 

“At Krems request.” There is a warning note to his tone, but it isn't dangerous. “You know, in the Qun we have these people called the Tamassran--.”

 

“Females.” she’d heard enough stories by now to have that down, at least.

 

“ _ Yes _ , but a little more  _ complicated  _ than that. Fine. Whatever. Yes. The  _ females _ . There is a particular job amongst them that’s sort of like a healer, but for the mind. Your… thoughts and emotions.”

 

“The re-educators?”

 

“No.” his hand falls over hers, giving it a light squeeze as they round a massive rock. The sounds of the many campsites are a little like a crowd of gulls descending on beached whale. “I met  _ these  _ Tamassrans when I was still young and willful, flooded with emotions I didn't understand yet. They talked to me, helped give me perspective on things.”

 

Skinner’s arm is getting tired from hanging off of him, but she doesn’t ask for a break, not when they are within site of anyone who might look their way. “Like elders.” not too crazy of a concept, really, and if Bull’s other tamassran stories held true it was a common thread for women in their society. “It means ‘the talkers’, right?”

 

“Good memory.” He smiles and she can see laugh lines poking out from the edges of his eyepatch. “So, wanna talk about it?”

 

“Fuck no.” He laughs and the sound is loud enough to drown out whatever humming lingers in her ears.

 

Back at the Chargers camp he follows her into her tent. He must bend his head to keep from hitting the sides, but they all have the same tents so he isn’t uncomfortable. He uses a rag to clean her foot before helping to massage the feeling into her toes. They are red and tingly so she knows she isn’t at risk of losing them. He massages the angry skin around her knee where the metal straps of her dragons foot had given her cold-burn, which pulls a groan of relief from her throat. “You know, ‘talking’ isn't the  _ only  _ thing the Tammassarans do.”

 

“Yes yes, I  _ get  _ it,  _ please  _ skip the flirty part before I die from secondhand embarrassment.”

 

He laughs but his hands are steady and his lips are fuller than they look. She’s heard him bed more men and women than she can count, but here in her little tent in Haven he is gentle. Every touch is whispered before he takes it, every noise from him is quiet and breathy. He lets her crawl into his lap without laughing at her, pressing her face gently into his neck while he rubs one finger in gentle circles around her core, through the sturdy barrier of her woolen stockings. It takes ages for her to relax enough to start pressing into his finger, for her to be wet enough that he asks permission to put his hand into her pants, longer still until she lifts her hips enough to let the tip of his finger press inside. 

 

Irrationally the gentle pressure scares her and she backs away, but he leans in to kiss her, petting her back and hip with his freehand to soothe her without ever losing patience. It takes a lot of petting before she is brave enough to take his finger, but they are long and dexterous things with a manageable girth. She sighs in relief when it happens and he whispers praise into the tip of her ear, curling and stroking a tingly sort of cold spot inside her that makes her feel.. Antsy.

 

Her fingers flex into the thick skin of his arms, and she rubs her brow back and forth against his neck, squirmy but uncertain what to do with herself. She nips at his neck, just to release some of her own odd energy, and he stifles a sound for her benefit, and so she does it again, harder this time. It helps, especially when a second finger joins to first to press more firmly into  _ that spot _ , and she wraps a hand round the strap on his chest to use as an anchor point, pressing herself down against them.

 

A sharper, more sudden pain pulls a startled squeak from her but he is pulling his fingers out almost the moment it happens. “Sorry, sorry, I gotcha.” his normally gruff tones are soft and soothing, like she is a cat that will suddenly scamper away. “A little too deep, is all.”

 

“Been a while.” Hot shame runs through her from gut to scalp, burning the tip of her ears. She pats his shoulder quickly, trying to redirect his attention. “Back to the-- the circles, that again, it felt really--”

 

“I’m not stopping if you don't want me to, don't worry Kadan.” he rubs her back firmly enough that she is mashed against his chest like a errant puppy, and oddly enough she loves it. “Here, get off for a second, I think you need something a little different.”

 

He strips nude for her and lets her run her fingers across his wide thighs and squishy hips before pressing her gently into her bedroll and pulling her stockings entirely away. He doesn't remove her tunic but he does ask permission before he puts his mouth against her, and after that time goes slippery, sideways and  _ warm  _ and disjointed. She forgets about the song and the mages, the Breach and the Herald, and by the time he has her in his lap again and is pressing his length into her it doesn’t feel as big and frightening as she expected it to be.

 

After hearing about it and for nearly a decade, ‘Riding The Bull’ is actually almost relaxing in its comfortable stretch and languid pace. He kisses her but only for moments at a time, letting her lean back to get the angle where its most comfortable and keeps his hands to himself, only holding her in place with a firm but gentle hug. The unexpected brush of his thumb against her gets her muscles tightening again, and her voice twisted and strained and rasping out against his throat like growling large and growly mabari. He finds the angle for her that brushes that spot again, either from intuition or practice, and keeps himself there, steady slow and unrelenting.  

 

Her body tenses, freezing stiff against him. She holds there, unable to move or help or do more than squeak out a small, desperate sound, but Bull doesn't change pace or depth at all until her orgasm shudders through her. She shakes and growls and clutches at him but he speeds up now,  deeper suddenly by what feels like a foot but is probably only an inch. Her nails dig and claw and she's begging for something more, though  _ what  _ she isn’t entirely sure. 

 

He finishes inside her with a pained sounding groan he is unable stifle entirely, pressing his pelvis flush to hers. She can feel the length of him twitch inside her, only once, and a needy rasp of her own leaves her lips without thought as she rolls her hips down into it. Bull locks his lips onto hers, hugging her tightly against him, staying inside her, cock and tongue both, while one fingers moves between them to bring her to a second climax, wriggly and full and  _ better  _ than the first by a previously un-reached margin.

 

It seems to last ages, too, and if not for his mouth on hers she might have been heard in Par Vollen. When he finally lets her go she slumps against him, too exhausted and shaky for someone who had done absolutely none of the work.

 

Skinner feels soft and heavy, and if Bull doesn't lay her down she will probably fall asleep like this, with his large and warm hands petting over her sweat-chilled back for the rest of the night. She wants to compliment his skills, or maybe thank him, but what she says instead is “You smell weird.”

 

Bull snorts and shifts them both, staying inside her as he lays back on her undersized bedroll, with Skinner as his own undersized blanket. “Yeah? Well you actually smell great, for the record. A happy Elf makes for a happy Qunari.”

 

She rubs her face against his neck, mulling his scent over in her mind. “You smell like.. Some of that stuff you keep putting in the stew. It’s not  _ terrible _ , I guess.”

 

“Cinnamon. It’s in my soap.”

 

“Stop putting it in the  _ stew  _ if its  _ soap _ .” 

 

Bull smacks her thigh lightly and it makes her jump. His soft cock gives an interested twitch inside her. “You’re lucky elves are  _ immune  _ to road-funk or I’d pitch you and Dalish into the river. You’ll get sick if you--”

 

“I know I know.” she cuts him off, pressing her face into his chest. He’s too real and too present to be bringing up half remembered things said by half-remembered people. “I’ll get a pint and do some training tomorrow, okay?”

 

“Only if you’re up for it.” He pets down her back, slow and rhythmic and soft. He falls asleep soon after, dropping off suddenly with his hand sitting heavy on her waist. The snoring is loud but after years of sharing tents and inns, its familiar to her. She presses her cold nose into his bosom, appreciating just how pillowy and soft it is, feeling herself start to slip away as well.

 

And then the singing starts.

 

It's only quiet for the first few moments it enters her mind, but the moment she focuses in on it the voice ramps up, calling her attention. It's a masculine sort of voice, or maybe the voice of many men at once. Crooning and roaring. It sounds like a song of battle and conquest, and a song of love, a song of need, a song of promise. It's in no language that she knows, but if she had to put a mouth to it she might wave her hand and say  _ darkspawn _ .

 

The father of darkspawn, maybe. The many, many, long dead and departed fathers of every darkspawn she has ever killed, calling to her to join them in one last glorious, bloody battle. She is one of them if she will let herself be, she is welcome amongst their number, they will tell of her song and story, the elf that drank of their blood and defeated their mother, only to return to them and blaze a trail to the sky, unleashing another Blight upon the world.

 

Skinner presses her ear to Bulls chest to block the sound, but it doesn’t do her any good. 

 

Bulls thumb strokes down her spine and she notices suddenly that his snores have stopped. The singing hasn’t. “You okay?” he asks, too quietly.

 

She works her jaw, a shiver going down her back as she tries to shake off the unrelenting song. “It’s just.. Too loud.” she says finally, and his hand moves up her back to wrap around her head. His palm covers her ear and while it could not possibly block out a voice that lives in her blood, the echoing silence brings the beat of his own heart under her head into sharper focus. It is steady and massive and she does not think a knife could ever pierce it. Her shoulders relax as the song goes quiet, hardly audible at the back of her mind.

 

“The mages never seem to sleep, huh?” the Bull speaks quietly but his voice seems to echo through his ribs and enter her more gently. “Probably the first time they haven't had a strict bedtime.”

 

He seems to expect an answer and so she grunts out an affirmative. His free hand pets her hip, her rear, the always sore muscles in her thigh. She could sleep like this, and she feels herself melting, but it seems like a waste. “What does ‘kadan’ mean?”

 

His hand doesn't pause, but he gives a thoughtful hum. “Literally? Its something like… ‘center of the chest’. Where the heart sits. Sort of like ‘love’ but with less frills and more utility, like most things up north.”

 

She doesn’t like that, not one little bit. Sten had called her that ages ago, she thinks, when she was always too overwhelmed and busy to question every little thing. Had she been with Alistair when he started saying it? She could barely even remember it, it was so long ago now.

 

“You don’t  _ love  _ me.” She says, a warning in her voice, and she has the irrational urge to bite him, but he just laughs at her, louder than any noise he’d made while he was inside her. 

 

“I love all you little assholes.” he says with breezy nonchalance, and she does bite him then. “Ow! Ow yes, fine-- no, not  _ like that. _ No  _ butterflies  _ or  _ roses  _ or longing glances. Qunari don’t  _ have  _ those sorts of feelings and it’s not something you’d want from me anyways. You’re just my rabid, stabby little elf buddy and I’m emotionally invested in your well-being.” 

 

She lets out a relieved breath, because  _ yes, that made more sense _ . Her next bite is more gentle. He pretends it hurts and she wriggles against him teasingly, but soon they are flat and slow and sleepy again, each petting the other though Bull is not a man that needs to be soothed. 

 

She doesn’t need to say it, and she knows he will not push her unless he thinks he needs to, but something soft and warm in the center of her own chest tells her to trust him with this. “I  _ think… _ ” she says it quietly, like maybe he won't hear the lie even in that “...I think I’m dying.”

 

He doesn't tense underneath her or bark any questions. He pets the short mess of her hair, the aged edges where she never can stand to let it grow. “Any particular reason, or just.. A feeling of dread?”

 

_ I drank poison I thought would kill me because a shem promised to kill me if I did not. The poison has caught up to me. The ten years or so were worth it but now that the time has come, I’m deathly afraid. _

 

“Just a feeling.” she says, and wonders if the Darkspawn would part for her when she entered the deep roads, if they really would let her reach the Archdemon. What would happen to her, if she begged it for her life. 

 

She knew the answer, in her heart.

 

_..and while she ate, she grew. She swelled and turned gray, and she smelled like them. They remade her in their image. Then she made more of them... _

  
_ Darkspawn _ . 


	6. Chapter 6

The Herald of Andraste sends the Chargers, sans Dalish, out to investigate Therinfall Redoubt. After the alliance with the mages in previous weeks all envoys to the Templars have disappeared. With Krem as acting commander, the lot of them sneak their way in through tunnels, snaking their way up the mountain through a secret escape passageway.There are many dead left behind, the bodies drawn and stretched, and lined up neatly and then piled on each other. The oldest of them have blankets to cover their faces, but the closer they get to the courtyard, the fresher the corpses, the less care seems to have been taken with them. 

 

There is a room with glowing red lyrium stretching up through the bodies and hanging from the walls and ceilings. They are careful not to touch any of it and as the signs of disease grow more prominent they each tie cloth over their mouths to save themselves from the smell.

 

In the courtyard, long emptied, there are signs of demonic activity, claw marks and pools of fetid black blood. It all makes something in Skinners bones buzz with energy and the need to fight, but nothing has been left behind for her to smash. There are signs of a large force, of troop movements and marches, both in and out, all very recent. Krem isn’t disappointed with the lack of action, though, and stresses that this was only ever a mission to gather intelligence. He oversees the careful gathering of ‘clues’ and the rest of them rib him for his caution, but as they head back to Haven with a few crates worth of information and no injuries, Skinner has to admit that the mission does feel like a success.

 

It’s a week away from Haven and things are impossibly even more crowded when they return, but their tents press in closer around the stables this time and the never ending snorting and shuffling (and occasionally screaming) of the Inquisitions horses (and  _ horse-like-things _ ) is pleasant in the night, and Skinner sleeps easier for it.

 

The mages have all been gathered and the stragglers given time to settle in. They are led, en masse, to the top of the mountain, just beneath the Breach, and Skinner holds Rocky and Dalish’s hands as they watch the great green light in the sky thrum, throb, pulse, stretch and finally, ultimately, disappear.

 

The crowd roars. Skinner covers her ears against it but she is smiling too. People are pulling partners into dances or falling to their knees to cry. Many are praying, thanking their gods, many more are thanking the Herald himself even though he is not close enough to hear them. Skinner lifts her claw, bouncing on her foot, and lets herself spin just once, hiding her face in her arms. The Bull pats her on the head once, meeting her eyes in a grin, before letting Dalish pull him into a dance. His great horns spin above the crowd even as the rest of him disappears into it.

 

There is a mad dash for the bar and the kitchens and by the time the wave of mages return with the Herald and his Seeker at the helm, there is feasting and music and beer awaiting them. 

 

XXXXXX

 

The festivities are wild and loud, stretching from morning through midday, and as night peaks across the horizon they show no signs of stopping. 

 

Skinner, though, is sick with dread. 

 

It had started slow, anxiety about fights that never broken out, jumping when the mages sent celebratory light shows into the air. Soon she is at her tent, and she’s not sure why but she is putting on her battle leathers, hooking the pauldrons to her shoulders and trying to tighten her breastplate. Her fingers are stiff in her gauntlets and she has to remove them, put the vambrace on first, tightening, loosening, should she have shined them, did she have time, would it  _ matter _ ?

 

Skinner is nearly in a full blown panic, sitting in the snow as she struggles to fit the poleyn around the knee-harness of her dragons claw. It doesnt fit and she’s afraid she has them switched somehow, and her breath is coming so quickly, so ready for battle, so sure, so  _ sure  _ something is  _ coming  _ and she needs to be  _ prepared… _

 

“It’s the cuirass that's crooked.” A gruff voice above her, and she looks into the strange, bearded face of Blackwall, the Inquisitions Warden in Residence. Skinner has seen him before but he is a stranger to her so she has never paid him any mind. He is utterly calm and looks to be almost at peace, and that, if nothing else, lets her know for certain that what she is feeling is all in her head. “You want me to help you with that?”

 

His Wardens uniform is a different cut than her own had been. The metal is shinier and the twin griffons on his chest more pronounced and sharp. It looks like liquid metal, and she wonders if that's what the Wardens of the north had always looked like. She nods and he moves to kneel behind her. Big hands touch her neck just lightly as he undoes a strap, the breastplate sagging on one side before he takes it in his hand and sets it to rights. She has more movement in her arm now and it's easier to fix the legs parts. He tugs and nudges at the straps at her back that he can reach and she lets him, though the differences must be minimal at best. 

 

Her poleyn, greave, and sabaton are fixed, her armour is as secure as it can be, but still she feels small and ever-shrinking as a force hurtles down upon her, ready and eager to crush her beneath its clawed, leathery.. Fucking evil,  _ archdemony _ , dragony, stupid  _ piss-ugly _ foot.

 

Blackwall touches her rerebrace and while there could be few things  _ less  _ intimate than a gloved hand tapping the overlapped metal armours of a fellow soldier, it feels to Skinner like his nails are scraping her very bones and she is quickly up on her feet again, covered in gooseflesh and a snarl pulling at her teeth. “I’ve got it,  _ shem _ .” she snaps, unreasonably angry at something that isn’t his fault, but unable really to help herself. “Back off, back the  _ fuck  _ off!”

 

He does so without argument and she thinks that she will probably feel guilty about it if she survives the night. Her hammer attaches to the hook on her back and she storms around the edge of camp, pacing and wringing her hands together. Krem stops her once but she can not explain and doesn’t try to. An hour later Rocky stops her three steps across the frozen lake, and she feels too  _ wild  _ to explain  _ why  _ she needs to go, and so instead just lets him bring her in, past the walls of Haven where, presumably, she can not escape. 

 

She gets more than a few side eyes from friends and strangers alike, and after the first shem healer touches the skin of her cheek and narrowly avoids getting bitten they leave her alone.

 

The scream in her ears is so loud that it takes her ages to hear the screams of Haven.

 

Krems hand touches her shoulder and it brings her back to her body and the roaring alarms of the bells. There is a great armed force coming over the mountains, visible by their torches, and she believes for a terrifying moment that it is the Darkspawn come for her, to take her underground by force.

 

_ Join us as we carry the duty that  _ **_cannot_ ** _ be forsworn ...And should you perish, know that your sacrifice will not be forgotten, and that one day  _ **_we_ ** _ shall join you. _

 

The soldiers move the villagers within the gates but the Chargers run outside it, meeting the attackers as they swarm the trebuchets. She thinks that they are darkspawn, or demons, their twisted hulking bodies reaching ruined claws towards her. They may be abominations but none like any she has seen. They look like the bodies they had found at Therinfall Redoubt, the ones filled and poisoned with shards of red lyrium, but they are somehow still alive and fighting. 

 

They fall the same as men, though it takes a few more hits, and when their bodies shatter beneath her hammer rather than crumble it is satisfying.

 

The trebuchet launches and the mountain bursts forth like a broken dam, drowning the bulk of the approaching armies forces. A cry of victory rings out behind them but she hardly hears it as a shattering roar rings through the air above them, shaking Skinner to her core and somehow still setting her blood ablaze.

 

“ _ Archdemon _ .” she whispers, and she knows that it can hear her. 

 

They are ordered back to the gates but there is little that short stone walls could do to protect any of them. They take out every lyrium poisoned templar ( _ because she realizes at some point, as she’s digging her knife through the holy sword on their chest that that is what they are _ ) that they come across as they run, but it is only The Iron Bull's voice ordering her onwards that keeps her from turning round to face her death.

 

The doors of the chantry close when they are inside, and Skinner joins the line of shem soldiers holding their back to it. There is hardly room to move within the sanctum, the crowd is pressed shoulder to shoulder and there is a bare meter between the guardsmen and the oldest mages.  Something hits the door and women scream even as Skinner sets more of her weight against it. There will be little room to fight here, when the enemy breaks through. They and the civilians are sure to die.

 

There is a plan being formed here, somewhere deeper in the room, and she knows that she should join it. Blackwall does not need to sacrifice himself to this Archdemon. Her time is almost up and she should let them know. 

 

_ In war, Victory, in Peace, Vigilance, in Death _

 

She takes a step away from the door, looking back at the tearful, frightened crowd, finding The Bulls horns above it. He would be near the Herald and Skinner would tell them what needed to be done with the Archdemon.

 

In death, Sacrifice.

 

The pressure in the room suddenly lets up, the crowd shifting and stepping away from the doors. There is a door at the far end of the Chantry and they pour through while someone, the Commander, yells and directs them through it. The civilians and mages are frightened but they do not trampel one another as they move and soon enough there is room to breath in the hall. There is an escape route and maybe they will not die today.

 

The doors shake as darkspawn-- as  _ Templars  _ throw themselves against it and when they finally burst open there is more than room enough to fight. The way is clear and The Iron Bull orders the Chargers to take up the rear of the tunnel and protect the civilians from anything that follows. Skinner and Rocky fall furthest behind the lot but between her hammer and his grenades the are hardly scratched by the enemies that soon pour in behind them.

 

The tunnel is short and the mountain it dumps them out on is steep and cold. She can hear the archdemon roar, could pinpoint where it was  just from the feeling in her chest without ever looking back, but she knows instinctively that it is not looking at her. 

 

The trip is hard on the mages more than anyone else. The path in the snow is narrow and whoever breaks it seems to get slower as the hours pass. They shuffle constantly, taking turns at being outside of the group and taking the worst of the wind. Skinner’s knee aches from could but her claw never slips. She stops once when she finds Dalish curled in on herself, rubbing her exposed and numb toes. She is too tired to heat them with magic, and but Skinner finds a shem mage to pass on a clear blue bottle of lyrium for her. It gets her back on her feet and moving, and the mass of people move so slowly that the three of them had hardly fallen behind at all.

 

They finally make camp, deep into the night, in a basin at the head of the mountain, protected on two sides from the winds. By the time the back of the pack reaches it there are already fires and tents up, people piled together to conserve warmth inside them even as the commanders, themselves exhausted, organize healers and food for those most badly affected. In the frigid camp, so near a fire that it’s heat is nearly blistering, her head in Dalish’s lap, Skinner lets herself sleep.


	7. Chapter 7

It takes more than a week to move the refugees of Haven to the crumbling castle of Skyhold, deep in the mountains. Rumour tells that Andraste showed it to the Herald in a vision and for such a magnificent thing to have never been marked on any map, Skinner finds that she is starting to believe it. For what little she knows of architecture, at least, it doesn’t look to her like something the elvish pantheon would have built, but then that's only a guess.

 

It is further work to make it livable, which takes from the magic a bit, but the busy work is good for her. Her fear and guilt flux and wane with the scaffolding, it seems, at some times insurmountable other times clear cut. When the new tavern ‘the Herald's Rest’ is built on the grounds, and after the Herald has been renamed ‘The Inquisitor’, her future starts to feel less terrifying.

 

She had fought an archdemon once already, when she was young and dumb and far less skilled than she is now. It will kill her to do it, but it’s also the right thing to do.

 

A voice in Skinners ear, like the first good dream she’s had in ages, whispers gentle encouragement.  _ Tell them _ , it says, _ they need to know and they won't be angry. They want to know you. They want to meet you. It won't be scary. _

 

She believes it somehow, and finds herself sitting beside Bull, elbows to her knees and a drink in her hands. He watches her from the corner of his eye, waiting patiently for her to speak. 

 

“Introduce me to the fucking Herald, okay?” 

 

It's not what he expected and she can tell by the way he he covers his mouth with his mug. “He goes by  _ Inquisitor  _ these days.”

 

“The Inquisitor then.” he doesn't agree instantly, and though she knew he ought to have questions his observation still unnerves her. “ _ Please _ .” she snaps, and that makes him laugh.

 

“If you want to make a good first impression you should probably call him Lavellan.” his voice is teasing and she scoffs, sitting up to take a drink. “Maybe try to scowl a  _ little  _ less.”

 

“My face is just like this.” 

 

He snorts and takes a swig of his qunari trash liquor. When the he’s finished shivering from the burn of it he set it aside, leaning an arm over her shoulders as he gives her steady stare. “ _ Look _ ,” he says, and she rolls her eyes when she realizes this is going to be a  _ talk _ . “I know that they say the dalish are ‘wild’ but Lavellan is wild like… a field of wildflowers, blooming and glowing wherever they can put their roots down, soaking up the sunshine and waving in the wind. You’re wild like..”

 

“A rabid hyena, I know.”

 

“Just... try not to  _ bite  _ him, okay?”

 

“I’ll be good.”

 

It happens later than she expects it too, long enough for her to think the request has been denied, and if not for the gleam in Bulls eye she might not have even realized he arranged it. The Chargers are crowded around a table in celebration of a recent, successful mission, The Bull having paid for the first three rounds, and Skinner is properly buzzed and relaxed. The empty spot on the bench beside her tilts slightly and she turns only to find Lavellen looking back at her with a sheepish smile.

 

“Do you mind?” he asks, and his yellow vallaslin glitters a bit in this light, more like ornate decoration than wild tattoos. It fits his oddly perfect image, the dark red of his hair and light coloured eyes. She can’t be older than him by more than a few years and comparatively her life must have been so much easier than a Dalish elf’s but she wishes for what must be the hundredth time that she had run away from the alienage to join them at the first oppurtunity.

 

He’s still looking at her, apparently used to silent staring and she remembers to wave her hand dismissively. “Be my guest-- it’s your bar.”

 

Krem greets Lavellen with a warm ‘your worship’ and slides him a drink like he was expected. The Iron Bull introduces them all and everyone jokes and brings him into the fold like he is already one of them, and if he has been their commander for months now she supposed that means that he always was. Dalish is her usual silly self and Stitches barely glances up from their game of chess, mumbling angrily under his breath about ‘cheating’ and ‘house rules’. 

 

Lavellen laughs at something Rocky says and suddenly is looking at her again, smiling. “So, Skinner, did he say? How did you join the Bull's Chargers?”

 

She freezes, running through the story in her head. How much to tell, how much to lie? She would be telling him the truth later on, could she lie now? 

 

Rocky’s boot nudges her dragons foot and she gives him the barest truth she can muster. “Killed some people.”

 

Bull laughs a bit and when she cuts her eyes to his he is clearly amused. “Skinner didn’t take kindly to nobles testing their blades on the elves of her alienage.” he says and yes, it's true, technically, in the broadest sense, but it paints a more heroic picture than she would have done herself.

 

“You’re lookin’ a little flushed there, Skinner,” Krem hums, elbowing Stitches in the back. “Hey Doc, maybe took a look at her before she faints straight away.”

 

“There’s no poultice for foolishness,” Stitches grumbles. He is already raising his shoulders around his ears in anticipation of her throwing something, but she takes a swig from her mug instead and hates all of them silently.

 

There are attempts to make the two of them talk (from every member of the chargers, she realizes soon after) but she is never quite able to figure out how to talk without lying. The Chargers do the bulk of the work for her, alternately teasing and talking her up to be grander than she is. They are trying to win her a  _ date _ , not a position at the frontlines, and she escapes the tavern entirely when the shame of it gets to be too much.

 

Sometime later when the revelry of the Tavern dies down, The Iron Bull meets her on the ramparts. She is looking to the West and he watches with her, but can not see what she knows is there, miles and miles away. “You’re awful at flirting.” he says, and her frown breaks into a grin. “You probably should get some practice in before you try seducing the prophet of a religious army, though. That’s top tier shit.”

 

“I wasn’t trying to seduce him!” she bristles up but it's for show and she is laughing, the sound echoing against the ancient beaten stone.

 

“Well not with that attitude, at least. Here, try it on me. Maybe just a hello.” The Bull is grinning too, and he turns towards her, patting his chest. His voice goes high and tight, more like the little-boy voice he used to tease Krem but with the odd patterns of Dalish. “Hi there, Skinner!  _ Gee whizz _ that  _ sure  _ is a  _ big  _ hammer!”

 

She snickers into and leans back against the battlements, flexing her arms. “Thank you, Milord,” she says with a girlish flutter, pushing her voice even higher than his. “All the better for my  _ big _ ,  _ Macho  _ **_Muscles_ ** .”

 

“Oh  _ boy _ , I  _ love  _ a woman than can crush me  _ flat _ .” 

 

“Does he really?” 

 

“How should I know?  _ I’m  _ not the one trying to get in his pants.”

 

She hums, sending a wistful look across the mountainside, a smile tugging at the the thick scars of her lips. “Oh, no? He’s pretty. And a  _ redhead _ . More you’re type than mine, I think.”

 

Bull heaves a long sigh, and he seems lighter for it. “You weren’t trying to get into his bed at all, were you?” he asks, and Skinner shakes her head. “Great. So  _ I _ screwed that up. Krem’s never going to let me live this down, you realize?”

 

“Better you than me.” he actually looks relieved. She doesn't let herself wonder if Bull had thought Lavellen was bad for her, or if he didn’t like the idea of what she would do to him. The answer was obvious and not particularly flattering. “I was hoping for a more private meeting, anyways. I just wanted to talk.”

 

“Well you’ve been introduced now so you can probably approach him whenever you like. Or just pass him a note if you still get all shy and girly and tongue-tied again.”

 

“Well he really  _ is  _ pretty.”

 

“Oh for sure.”

 

“Those tattoos.”

 

“The lips.”

 

“That voice.”

 

“That  _ ass _ !”

 

There are opportunities to talk to the Inquisitor after that-- times in which he runs past a window she is looking out of, or sits only a few seats away in the dining hall. She could chase him down or pull him aside, but it's always easy to put it off for a better time.

 

One day while she is sitting on the battlements, staring over the mountaintops and humming to the song that lives inside her, the troops are roused. It seems like everyone capable of holding a sword is sent west, and she shudders at the pleasure that seems to come with every step in that direction. The march is long but surprisingly fast, briskly efficient in more ways than not, and everyone too tried from the walking to keep anyone else awake in the night. They are halfway across Orlais before she thinks to ask Krem where they are going.

 

“To Adamant,” he tells her, voice low so no one outside their circle can hear it. “To fight the Wardens.”

 

“Shouldn’t they be helping fight the Archdemon?” she hisses, aghast, but he just shrugs.

 

“Most of them disappeared a couple years ago, as it turns out, and when His Worship went looking for them… Well, I don’t understand it, really, but supposedly that Archdemon has got them so scared that they’re willing to work  _ with  _ it. Bullshit, right?”

 

“ _ Bullshit _ !” she agrees, and there is anger in her at the very idea of it. Was that why she and Alistair had to kill the Archdemon alone? The reason none of the northern Wardens ever made it to them to help? Was it  _ always  _ cowardice?

 

“Total bullshit.” Krem nods but it’s clear from his expression he has no real emotional stakes in the matter. “So far as I understand it, we are going to kill the lot of them and hope that there isn’t another Blight in our lifetime, or that a few have squirreled themselves away.”

 

If it has to be done she’ll do it.

 

But it’s… worse. Worse than Skinner was expecting.

 

Tar poured down the sides of Adamant Fortress like water, dark and foul smelling, killing or maiming anyone it touched. Ladders full of troops were drenched and burned as they tried to scale the walls, skin left behind, slit throats, arrows through the visors of their helms. Skinner speeds up an abandoned ladder in record time, ignoring the hot greasy pull of what has been left on the rungs, and is over the side before they can stop her. She knocks Wardens over the side of the wall, left and right, up and over, giving the people behind her time to join her. 

 

A shimmering barrier comes up in front of her and a splash of fire smacks it, inches from her face, roaring and crawling along its edges like the tide until the spell retreats.

 

There are screams from everywhere around her and as her hammer gets heavier in her arms and the blood dripping down it makes it harder to grip, there is no sign of direction or orders to retreat. Another set of armour crumbles beneath her strength, another warden wheezes out a final breath, another face is made unrecognizable, glowing red eyes staring blindly into hers as the life and some strange mages curse leaves them.

 

Her boot slips in blood and a spell throws her against the battlements. Her maul is gone and a blade swings towards her, but she rolls away and her knife finds the weak part of his armour like it was meant to be there. He screams and she takes his throat, moving on quickly through the battle for the next opponent.

 

There are demons, suddenly, more of them than there had been men. They are always new and healthy and never tire, and so Skinner she is not allowed to either. 

 

There is a battleaxe on the ground, held by a hand that has no owner. Skinner takes it up and it’s light and sharp enough to cut through the enemy like butter. It doesn't seem to even recognize that the demons wear any armour at all, and she moves almost like she is unencumbered, rushing and slashing, saving and slaying, to the heart of the fortress and further, seeing less and less Inquisition and blood as she goes along.

 

A shriek above her, and the castle shakes. The stone crumbles as a massive claw destroys the hall ahead of her. Someone is grabbed and his scream cuts off before he is even pulled through the opening. Skinner hardly pauses before she rushes at it, ready to swing, but the archdemon is already out of range, turning and flying into the air. 

 

She follows it, as best she can, but the fortress is a labyrinth and there is never an end to the Wardens attacking her. She cannot fathom their numbers, how things could have gotten to this, but she also has little time to think. The Archdemon circles, and roars and blows its fire. It is not focussing on her at all, and she wonders if it thinks she is one of Corypheus’ already.

 

There is a bridge, and there are screams. Skinner is far above it, alone, as the Archdemon swoops down over her. The tips of tail hits the the rampart beside her but it’s focus is on the people crowded at the far end. The Bull is unmistakable, and the glowing hand of the Inquisitor, but the archdemon covers the rest before she can see anything else. It growls, a feeling that rolls through her bones, her mind, her spirit, and leaps.

 

An explosion of light beneath it and the bridge collapses.

 

The Bull runs for safety, pulling along the Inquisitor. The people follow behind the, too slow, all of them too slow.

 

The bridge folds in on itself and is gone, and  the valley below it glows green.

 

No impact of stones, no screams, no nothing.

 

Just gone.


	8. Chapter 8

The Inquisitors death does not end the battle, but it turns the tide. The wardens suddenly turn and begin to fight the demons and Skinner redoubles her energy to a proper purpose. It is hours before she turns and doesn't find anything else attacking her. The way is clear, save for the men and women surrounding  who her look back with as much weary hope as she herself feels. They join in a cheer that stretches across the fortress, and Skinner sinks onto her knees, her ass, and finally her back.

 

The battle is won.

 

And the song in Skinner’s ears, which had rang so loud and so insistent as to start to feel like her own thoughts, is gone.

 

She hears others kneeling or sitting the same as she is, clanking armour and heavy bodies hitting the ground. The stone beneath her is sticky with blood sand and demonic ichor, but so long as her mouth is to the hot dry air she can stand it. She’ll burn the uniform if she must, but that can come later, after she rests.

 

She wakes again inside a dining hall that has been converted into a sick ward. Soldiers of both uniforms are arranged head-to-toe on banquet tables with healers running between them and shouting for help. Skinner can’t remember being hurt at all in the battle but most of her armour has been replaced with bandages holding poultices against her skin.

 

She doesn’t talk to the healers, but when Stitches comes by he tells her that Lavellan and Bull both survived the battle. They won't clear her to leave with the first batch of healthy soldiers but a day later she is well enough for a horse and makes good enough time with a small group of strangers to catch the tail end of the march just past Abyssal Peak. She is too tired to seek out the rest of the Chargers and trades the horse for a ride in one of the wagons with two other equally exhausted elves. Their post-battle rutting is kept quiet in deference to her, and politely beneath a blanket so it doesn't bother her sleep or anyone else's sensibilities. During the second day happier looking pair invite her to join them but she declines and finds a different wagon with far more sensible dwarves to spend the night.

 

It takes an age to reach Skyhold and Skinner does nothing but sleep. She does not hear singing. She does not walk away from the wagon. She _never_ wakes standing or sitting up, and though she still sometimes dreams of the Archdemon it no longer calls to her and so hardly troubles her at all.

 

Rocky finds her amongst the pile of dwarves and leads her closer to the front of the march with the other chargers. They have their own wagon for her to nap in and don’t tease her more than strictly necessary. The Chargers all survived and it is clear that they are relieved to have her back with them. The Bull comes by once and gives her a pat on the shoulder and permission to rest as much as she likes on the road.

 

“You earned it.” he says, and she agrees.

 

No Archdemon. No Calling.

 

She is free again and has the rest of her life to be who she wants to be, and the feeling is larger than she is, deeper, wider, a vast stretch of joy and possibility and _time_.

 

Though as it turns out, she only has a week to enjoy it.

 

The Havens rest is loud and rowdy as she slips inside, avoiding the dancing shems and swinging mugs. There are puddles of beer on the floor and and shouted arguments, laughing people who have only just gotten home. She is still dazed from her nap and blurry around the edges, but she can find Bull even in a crowd this large. Skinner sinks onto a bench beside him, leaning her head on his shoulder rather than the sticky tables.

 

“You sure you weren’t possessed by a demon of Sloth?” he asks, bumping a mug against her head.

 

She takes it and sits up long enough to let it warm her. “I don't think they _actually_ sleep all that much.”

 

Rocky laughed and somewhere else in the bar cheers went up. “So what you're saying is you're _worse_ than a demon?”

 

“You’re surprised?”

 

The cheers get closer and the musician cuts off the mourning dirge of ‘ _Oh, Grey Warden_ ’ to start in on ‘ _Three Little Empresses_ ’, which for whatever reason she seemed to think Levellan liked. When he rounded the stairs and squeezed past Rocky to plant himself on The Bulls other side he seems in fine spirits, so maybe she was right.

 

“Bull!” Lavellen is beaming and still in his travelling cloak. He must have only just come back to Skyhold. His hair is dirty, his nose is red and his cheeks wind-chafed as well. The overall effect is less flattering but it puts her at ease. “I figured I’d find you here!”

 

“Doesn’t take a spy to guess the Chargers are in the bar.” Bull teases, and there is something deeply affectionate in his voice. “Good guess, though. I hear negotiations went well?”

 

“Yes, of course, I had help with that but that’s not the exciting thing--I found a _dragon_!”

 

She picks her head off Bulls shoulder to let him get properly excited about it and she and Krem share a look over their own mugs. Inquisition sanctioned dragon hunting sounded like Bulls dream come true, and if Lavellen was fixing to come with them it would probably be one of the most fun missions they ever had.

 

Her bench shakes as someone sits beside her but she is too deep in her mug to give it much care. The minstrel starts in on ‘ _Sera Was Never_ ’ and she hums along, bouncing her knee. Her claw makes a satisfyingly heavy _‘click’_ against the wooden floor, largely drowned out by the crowds.

 

“I know it’s not a priority, but it’s sitting on an old forge so I mean, it _could_ be a priority, right? People are always saying we need more, more uh--”

 

“Rocks,” Bull smiles like Lavellan is a busty barmaid, and the Inquisitor blushes like one too.

 

“Yes! Rocks!” Lavellan is practically vibrating with the desire to bouncing in his seat but is clearly holding back. He’s a bundle of immature energy, and it causes something oddly maternal to bloom in Skinners chest. She knows she had never been like that, herself, but hopes that someone will protect it in him. “The dragon has the rocks and is probably, I don't know, scaring villagers? It’ll be good for, you know, moral!”

 

“You know what would be good for morale?” Skinner suggests with a devious smile. “The Inquisitor in _dragonsbone_ armour with a _dragonscale_ cloak. I will skin it for you, if you like-- I am pretty handy with a knife.”

 

Lavallen smiles, then frowns as the mental image of what that would entail seems to occur to him, then smiles again in a charmingly delicious way. “So my first impression of you was right. Scary, stabby city elf. My mom warned me about girls like you.”

 

The Bull laughs uproariously at that, slapping them both on the back. Skinner is used to this and manages to save her drink but Lavellen is not so lucky. “Boss _nothing_ could prepare you for a girl like _Skinner!_ She’d skin a scrawny kid like you alive-- it's how she got her name, after all!”

 

“They call you Skinner because you skin boys?” he is laughing and she wonders how she had been afraid to talk to him not so long ago. The Calling had made everything in the world so loud that she had hardly had room for her own thoughts.

 

She leans forward, reaching around her boss her to ruffle the Herald of Andraste’s dirtier hair. “Don’t listen to Bull.” she cooes. “I only skin shems, and only the ones who get on my nerve. You’re perfectly safe with me.”

 

“If I’m not your enemy or your boss, does that make me the princess in the tower, waiting on you to blaze a bloody trail to my rescue?”

 

She laughs, and wonders if maybe Lavellen will join Bull's Chargers someday after all. “I guess city elves and the dalish aren't so different, if we tell the same sorts of stories at the end of the day.”

 

“I think taking the book to deserving shems is common ground across Thedas. Ah, no offense meant to present company, of course.” He pinks a bit as his eyes scan the group quickly, but Stitches couldn’t care less and Krem is grinning almost as brightly as Dalish.

 

“None taken, your worship. I’ve avoid the pointy end of Skinners blade for near on ten years and the trick is to never earn it.”

 

“Come to think of it, you might wanna pick a different seat, buddy.” Bull says, looking past her shoulder and she remembers the silent person seated behind her. “You know we almost called her _‘Chompy’_.”

 

“Well so long as she’s _housebroken_..”

 

Skinner turns around, sending the stranger a playfully toothy smile-

 

And freezes.

 

Alistair looks back at her, older, uncomprehending. He is looking at her teeth, the ever-present snarl, and did he _always_ have freckles? She feels like she ought to have remembered freckles. He catches her stare and raises his eyebrows at her, a weird tug of a smile on his lips. “You’re not _really_ going to bite me, are you?” he jokes and Maker but it really _is_ him.

 

“ _Oh_ , Fuck.” Skinner says, and his eyebrows suddenly leap up his forehead.

 

“Tabris?” His voice is louder than it ought to have been in the overfull bar, like he is shouting it. The name is ugly sounding after so long and hits her ear wrong. He sounds shocked, hurt, like shes stabbed him through and he might actually, literally cry. “ _Dove_ Tabris?”

 

“Oh _fuck_!”

 

The sadness is gone just as quick and replaced by joy. His arm is on her shoulder and she drops her ale on the floor, and he is pulling her into a hug. “Tabris!”

 

“Oh **_shit_ **!” she scrambles at his hand and pulls back, away, but his fingers tighten like cuffs around her arms and he pulls back, looking at her with complete and utter fury.

 

“ _Tabris_ , what the **_fuck_** _!?”_

 

She only has to push against him for a moment for him to let her go, because even after ten years he’s so much softer than she is. She stumbles to her feet and the entire world (or at least the entire corner of the bar) is staring between her and Alistair.

 

Lavellan is standing as well, looking ready to step in if he needs to, but is looking between them to decide who needs protection.

 

Bull is staring her down, calculating. “You don’t mean _Tabris_ as in _the--_ ”

 

“Not _here_!” she snaps, taking a step back. Her claw hits a crate and sends it skittering. Alistair stands and so, too, does Bull.

 

Her leader takes her hand and pulls her her through the crowd which parts for him without his having to ask. He takes them to his room on the top floor which is probably as close to privacy as anyone's going to get without marching halfway across Skyhold. There is a hole in the roof in one corner that lets in moonlight, and Bull lets her go, moving to light the candles near his bed. Alistair comes in behind them and Lavellan brings up the rear, closing the door behind him.

 

Skinner moves so that the door leading out onto the ramparts is easily accessible. She won’t run but having the option makes her feel better.

 

Alistair begins pacing in tiny, angry little figure eights. He’s wearing linens with wool underthings to protect him from the chill, but even without his armour and pauldrons he’s so much broader than he had been when they were young. “ _Alive_ . **Here** . Of _course_ the _Inquisition_ , I should’ve just asked when I got here! Oh yes, Inquisitor, thank you for the help and this may be an odd question, but when you started your holy war and saw an archdemon did a mean mugging little city elf show up at your door, asking who to stab? She might look a little, well, undead, but I’m quite sure she wouldn’t be able to miss the fun!”

 

He seems to be ramping up to something and Skinner looks to Bull for guidance here but he is staring at her too. Lavellan at least doesn’t look angry, but he is rubbing his fingers together in the same anxious way that Dalish often did, looking between them. “I’m not _entirely_ sure if my instinct to oversee this was correct.” he admits. “Is this too private?”

 

Skinner would have told him to leave but Bull is quick to squash the idea. “I think Alistair could use you in his corner right now.”

 

“ _Alistair_ could use an _explanation_ !” Alistair snaps, gesticulating violently. She takes a step back and his face instantly crumbles, his shoulders drawing in to look small, taking one step closer. “No, _no_ , I’m sorry, Tabris, I’m not angry-- I’m lying, I’m _so,_ so angry, but I’m _happy_ and I’m _sad_ and I’m surprised--- this is a _lot_ at once and I’m not really processing it well but stick with me here, okay? Don’t run off.”

 

“I’m here.”

 

“Good good good.” He turns in two more circles, still mumbling before planting his feet and visibly pulling himself together. “Tabris. You can not _possibly_ understand how happy I am that you are alive, and how incredibly angry I am that you never sent me a _single sodding_ letter to tell me that.”

 

“I… did not want to be found.” she scratches her face, her hair, her neck. She wants to crawl out of her skin and find a newer, looser set to hide in. “It.. made sense at the time. I’m sorry.”

 

Alistair gives a sob and suddenly rushes towards her. His hand moves over her face, tracing her scars with a gentle thumb, pressing his forehead against hers. He doesn't close his eyes even when they well with tears and so she keeps hers open as well. “I thought you were _dead_ , Tabris!”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“You look great, you know? What the **_hell_ ** is wrong with you? No no, I don't mean it, I’m not going to hurt you but _I mean-_ ” he breaks off with a strangled laugh, turning away to march to the door and back. Tabris stays where he left her, wondering if she ought to be being as emotional as he is. “-Let's be _fair_ here, you would’ve hit me if I did this to _you_ ! It’s why I kept looking, you know, I figured _‘If she’s waiting on me and I give up on her she’ll be so_ **_pissed_ ** _, if she_ **_dies_ ** _and sees me not getting vengeance she’ll curse me’!_ ”

 

Lavellen steps forward, trying to be the voice of calm as Alistair’s voice gets loud enough to drown out the muffled revelry in the bar. “I’m sure she would’ve understood, Alistair--”

 

“No, I absolutely said that.” Skinner admitted. “A few times.”

 

“She did! She _absolutely_ did, the _nasty_ little--” he is laughing and then suddenly sobbing, covering his face and looking at her like her face is hurting him. “Can I hug you, Tabris? Just a short one, I swear I won't get you all gooey with tears or anything.”

 

She opens her arms wide and he folds himself down against her, arms around her waist while she wraps hers around his broad shoulders. He’d been so small and happy in her memories, and he smells like horses and road. Skinner has hardly leaned her head into him to get a better feel for him before he is yanking out of her grip, backing up and pointing a finger in her face.

 

“And! _And_ ! You, I can't _Believe_ you did this! To _me_!”

 

Lavellen gave a frustrated growl. “Okay, this is going to go on forever and I can’t help if no one explains anything. Who are you to him, exactly? His wife?”

 

Alistair gives another miserable groan and Skinner flushes red. Bull steps in before there can be another meltdown. “Apparently, Boss, Skinner here is Warden Commander _Dove Tabris_ , the Hero of Ferelden.”

 

Lavellan only tilts his head in confusion. “The… dead one?”

 

“That's right. The _incredibly_ dead one.” Bull steps forward and sets a hand on her shoulder and she thinks that maybe Bull is here, not just to hear a confession but to be in _her_ corner. “For what it's worth, Alistair, when I found her she was _almost_ dead and people _were_ trying to kill her.”

 

“That does help, actually.” Alistair rubs at his eyes and he looks so much older than she remembers him. He’s grown up handsome, in his own weird potato-y way, but even that makes her gut clench in guilt. He watches Bulls hands and heaves another irritated sigh. “Maker, and of _course_ you're with a _Qunari_ , too.” he sounds more petulant than hysterical now, at least. “I _knew_ you would be. I drove the Arishok in Kirkwall half mad trying to get him to forward letters to Sten. Figured you’d run off with him, you know? He kept saying he hadn’t seen you and that Qunari didn’t _have_ lovers, but I was _sure_ he was just covering for you.”

 

That hurt a bit, but she deserved it. “I never saw Kirkwall.”

 

“I did. I saw Seheron, too. Did you ever go there?”

 

“No.”

 

“Sten was heartbroken. He’s the one that got me to stop looking for you.” Alastair steps away and he’s sad again, but at least he isn't crying. He goes to sit on the Bulls bed but seems to think better of it, sitting on the floor in front of it and putting his head in his hand. “He said you’d never written him, and that if you had run away from the Wardens and _not_ gone to him, then you must be dead. Then he kicked my ass and threw me out of the country. His way of grieving, I guess. I think he’d always wanted to do it, so it probably helped.”

 

That hurts worse. She sits at the edge of the bed, putting a hand in his hair like she used to do. It’s been so long since she’s done it but its still feels natural to her. His hair is wavy rather than bristly these days, but so is hers. A small change in the long run.

 

“Mature and rational adult that I was, I decided he was _hiding_ you from me because you were his new.. I don't remember. Consort or something. It wasn’t a flattering thought, I’m sure you could imagine. I figured you were parading around up there, living it up in luxury with all those… big… _horny_ guys you like so much, fawning over you, getting you all fat with dates and giant scowling babies.”

 

She decidedly does not look at Bull. “You forgot about my face, I’m guessing?”  
  
“Time does dull the details, yes. You’re not as pretty as I remembered. Probably because you did such an ugly thing.” He reaches a hand up to thread his fingers with hers. “I stopped being angry after a while, and then I just hoped you were happy. Then, when _The Calling_ started and all the Wardens started to panic… Out of nowhere I suddenly believed you really were dead. It felt good to admit it to myself, but now that you’re alive again I don't really know how to feel.”

 

Bull lets them have his room for the night, which would be more generous if Skinner wasn’t sure he would be spending it in Lavellans quarters. Alistair and Tabris lay side by side, fully clothed on Bulls sagging mattress and talk about what the last ten years has given them. It’s hard to say which of them had it better but they can both agree that Alistair had it worse. He doesn’t see the appeal in being a low-ranking mercenary at all, and the knowledge that she enjoyed a life he would have hated seems to help him accept that she hadn’t stayed Warden-Commander, despite that he was never able to rise to that rank himself.

 

They relax, bit by bit, and he has pulled a few laughs from her by the time the sun comes up. He tells her she laughs like a witch, which is true, and when he presses a kiss to her lips neither are surprised when he doesn’t feel the same spark he remembers. She’s relieved to hear that he has had women since her, and teases him lightly for it to make him bold. He seems to blossom as his heart remember that it had moved on and there is something easy and good between them when the sun starts peeking through the dilapidated roof. The Calling had been hard on him, too, when he heard it. He can explain better to her the way the Archdemon had manipulated the minds of the Wardens and the way the rest of them had been willing to do anything to save their own lives. She tells him that she had never thought once that he would be at Adamant with the others, willing to work for the Archdemon in order to live, and the two of them curl up together like they used to, wrapped together with Alistair’s head pressed to her shoulder.

 

They talk more when they wake, and it’s easier still. They both have stories to fill the pauses and only when they leave to catch dinner in the hall does she realize that word had spread avout her. There are stares and whispers and only Alistair's uncomfortable joke clue her in on the idea that that they are not angry, but _excited_ to know she is in their midst. The Lady Seeker stares from across the hall as though she is something amazing and terrible all at once, and Tabris leaves with a promise to Alistair to meet him again in Bulls room.

 

Leliana is waiting outside at the top of the long, curved stairway leading to the grounds. She stands in the shadow cast by the door but Tabris can feel her gaze the moment they cross paths. Leliana looks exactly as she remembers her, young and sly and dangerous, with an amazed, sad look in her eye.

 

Tabris asks her when she has gotten to Skyhold and Leliana envelopes her in a hug that feels, at least, uncomplicated.

 

“You are busy,” Leliana whispers, and though she looks the same she _sounds_ so much older. “With Alistair. I can wait. Find me when he leaves and we will talk. I have _missed_ you, friend.”

 

Leliana kisses her cheek and melts into the shadows as Alistair rounds the corner with the front of his shirt filled with food. They eat on the floor as the sounds of the tavern filter up to them. There are songs about the two of them, somehow, that Tabris has never heard before and he laughs at her when she tries to repeat the words and instantly loses track of them. He looks more like himself when he laughs, or at least closer to how she had remembered him.

 

A runner comes to tell them that Alistair has been given a room of his own, and the two of them spend most of their freetime there for the next few days, catching up.

 

When she comes back to the tavern Bull picks on her incessantly for wasting her talent as a spy. “Why haven’t I ever used you for reconnaissance? You sly dog. Here I was thinking you were the muscle of the group only for it to turn out you’ve got wits, too. How the hell did you hide them for so long?”

 

The Lady Seeker who, along with Cullen, has taken to following her around since the rumour got out, pipes up in indignation. “How could you not have known after ten years? Comrade in arms, fighting side by side, and you never even knew her?”

 

“I know her just fine.” Bull shrugs, and the words soothes the fear in her heart that he had truly felt betrayed. “And I would’ve known who she was if I ever had any reason to question her, or if anyone had ever wanted me to look into the disappearance of the Commander of the Grey. No one asked, her story checked out, so I never figured it out. Simple as that. Maybe look to your spymaster if you want someone to blame here.”

 

Cullen wants her to join to war table, the next time it is called, but Leliana later reassures her that she dissuaded him from the idea. She at least seems to understand just how badly Tabris does not want the responsibility.

 

The next time Skinner is out on the training field, working through her paces with her newly pilfered battle axe, Krem will not stop staring at her. She would’ve have thought Krem, the Tevinter military deserter and the inquisitors favourite storyteller wouldn’t have reason to be starstruck _or_ angry with her, but maybe she was wrong about that.

 

“Something on my face, Krem?” she finally asks, setting the oversized axe into a training dummies chest, sending straw falling in clumps to the beaten snow.

“Other than shem-cooties? Nah.”

 

She kicks a frozen dirt clod at him which he happily dodges. “Oh, fuck _off_.”

 

“It’s just hard to believe. _Our_ Skinner. All _mature_ and making friends with _humans_.”

 

“I swear-”

 

“Face it, Skinner, your time is done here. We all know your secret. You’re a progressive, tolerant softie whos bound to be on the right side of history.”

 

While she (and Leliana, _and_ Bull) all refuse to let Tabris be called into the war room for anything short of ‘Warden Business’, The Inquisitor does still get it into his head to bring Skinner out with him on the field.

 

The Bull comes as well, and only just the once Leliana asks to come as well. There is an abandoned mansion deep in unsafe territory that she says she would like to look into personally. The trip is oddly nostalgic to Skinner, though Alistair has to beg off, only travelling the first day with them down the mountain and then breaking off to attend to Warden affairs, of which he is apparently, _finally_ in charge of. He is excited for it and has actual plans in mind, and so when he hugs her goodbye none of them are particularly upset to part.

 

There are demons to fight, and it's harder without mages, but between them only Lavallen is an inexperienced fighter, but he has the glowing magic of the fade in his palm to even out the odds. The four of them are an unbeatable force when working together and while she does not know what his plans are for the Inquisition Skinner can not help but believe he is destined to accomplish them.

 

The sounds he makes when The Iron Bull enters his tent at night are pretty unmistakable, though, which helps Tabris to remember not to keep him on a pedestal. They are apparently _both_ Qunari-loving, human-hating elves at the end of the day. (Even if he is better at keeping the inelegant parts of himself wrapped up than she ever would have been)

 

Leliana lets her put her head in her lap when they sit by the fire, petting her hair while she tells her newer, happier stories. It’s much like old times, really, save for the ravens who seem to come for her no matter where they are on the road. They are nearly finished with their mission before Tabris works the nerve up to ask Leliana to help her write a letter to Sten.

 

The reply doesn't come until they are back at Skyhold and Lavellen is off on a different mission with a different team.  Sten’s letter is three times as long as hers and so achingly heartfelt that Leliana has to hold her to stifle her sobs in the echoey library. If he is angry with her he does not tell her so, and the pain in her chest at seeing his even, steady handwriting hurts worse than anything she has felt in a long time. If this is what Alistair felt on finding her alive she’s shocked she hadn’t hit her after all, but this pain, she knows, she had caused for herself.

 

More letters, slowly travelling back and forth across nations over months. Bull asks her who they are from when he sees the Qunari seel, and drinks heavily when she tells him.

 

He gets a letter of his own soon after. A nervous energy sets over him as he reads it and he goes to the war room with Lavellan and his advisors to talk it over. A few more weeks pass and Tabris has a new letter from Sten. The Qunari have agreed to an alliance with the Inquisition and Sten will be arriving on the Storm Coast to discuss the negotiations personally. He does not hide that it is all and _only_ for the sake of seeing her.

 

Bull comes in soon after, pale and itching to take out his anxiety in the training ring.

 

“You have to be respectful.” he tells her, striking out with his maul, the impact of it against her shield sending her sliding a few steps back on the ice. “None of that ‘ _don't tell me what to do_ ’ shit you get in your head sometimes.”

 

“Sten always liked it when I stood up to him.” she says, coming back and striking out with her dagger, a slower than she would do in a real battle. He knocks it away with the haft of his weapon, pushing her back again.

 

“He’s not a _Sten_ anymore, he’s the _Arishok_.” The Iron Bull hisses. “There are no names under the Qun, only titles! If you get his wrong it’s like calling an Empress a maid!”

 

“So what should I call you then?”

 

He glowers at her and the next blow sends her flying, but she catches her feet beneath her and comes back, twice as hard.

 

They leave soon after, The Inquisitor, the Chargers, and some of the Inquisitors more diplomatic inner circle. At the coast they meet with a Qunari emissary, but he is tense with worry. He is vaguely familiar to her, an elf without tattoos,  but his features are too tight with stress and sleeplessness for her to be sure where she's seen him before. He tells them that Venatori Mages had been sniffing around the area the boat was set to land in, and it had been stuck at sea for the last two days.

 

“Our Dreadnought is safely out of view, and out of range of any mages on the shoreline.” the elf tells them. “We’ve got to take out the mages and once its safe to make land send up the signal for them to come in close.”

 

“Seems risky to me, I’d rather that they put down somewhere we could defend.” Lavellen stands tall and stern. “We could send a raven over the water with coordinates, easy.”

 

“The Dreadnoughts aren't built for _speed_. If they move further out it only gives the mages time to gather more to their numbers, and we have to move quickly so they don’t come clustering either way. Once they are on land they can handle themselves fine, but in the shallows their at a massive disadvantage against even just a few mages.”

 

Lavellen looks to the Bull, brows furrowed in worry. “What do you think, Bull?”

 

“I don’t like it. But it doesn’t exactly sound like we’ve got much choice. It would take ages for reinforcements to arrive and they’ll already by getting low on supplies by now. Not to mention that nowhere is exactly _safe_ for a Qunari warship to touch down in the first place.”

 

There are two ridges that the Venatori seem to have clustered onto,  and so the team will split up, the Chargers taking one and Lavellan’s inner circle taking the other. It doesn’t escape their notice that the Chargers got the more easily traversable landscape, while Bull will be protecting his shiny new lover himself. Krem meets Skinner’s eyes with sarcastic grin. Their Chief was getting soft.

 

“Just be careful.” Bull tells them, and the anxiety that hasn’t left him for weeks at the idea of this meeting with his people is clearly starting to get to him.

 

“Yes mother.” Krem smirks, trying not to laugh at Bulls henpecking.

 

“The Qunari don’t _have_ mothers.”

 

Skinner looks out across the sea at the ship only just visible above the waves. It's a low lying thing, dark and nondescript, like a island that could be easily covered by the tide. Sten is there, close enough to reach. Maybe he’ll be angry with her, in person. He will probably ignore her until he has finished negotiations with Lavellan, either way.

 

In her wilder fantasies, secret inside her bedroll, she remembered Alistair’s ideas about him stealing her away from Ferelden. Probably not as a pet, like Alistair had imagined, but maybe as his bodyguard and friend.

 

 _‘I’ll see you soon, Kadan_ ’ He had written her, and the letter was folded neatly beneath her armour, at the center of her chest.

 

“We’ll be fine, Chief.”

 

Skinner pulls her maul up, smiling up at him. “They’ll be dead before they know it.”

 

The Iron Bull takes a breathe, lets it out, squares his shoulder. “All right, Chargers.” He announces. “ _Horns up_!”

  
_“_ **_HORNS UP_ ** _!”_


End file.
